Kells 2.0

Run Well

2011-05-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

It seems as if the Flying Pig is always going to give me something to think about. I mean, what else does one do while torturing themselves for hours? I shouldn't have run the half marathon yesterday. I hadn't trained - I got sick in Feb and stopped running until last week. I hadn't eaten well in a month (back to my 6 mountain dews a day diet), and I hadn't rested at all that week (in fact, I'd probably gotten less rest than normal, which is saying something). But, I like this event, and my wife was running and it seemed like a cool thing to do together, and I thought, why not? Last Saturday I'd pulled an 8-mile run relatively easily, how much harder could 13 miles be?

A lot

I finished the race. I even finished it in respectable time, given my utter lack of training for 2 months, on what is pretty difficult course. I kept pace with Kim, and in that respect it was a very cool thing for us to do together. But, is that the goal? To simply finish?

A friend of mine was texting me yesterday as I ~~suffered~~ recovered after the race, and said, "Well, you finished. That's what matters." And I suppose to an extent, that's true. But the more I thought about it, the more I don't really want to settle for living that way. Running just to finish wasn't fun. I wasn't accomplishing anything - I hadn't worked hard for months to see that pay off. Sure, I willed myself to put one foot in front of the other for 13.1 miles, but what does that get me? Last year I worked, and struggled and accomplished something. Last year, I trained well, so I ran well. (or, at least better than this year) This year, I just sort of existed. I may have made it to the end, but I did so poorly, and then was in a lot of pain for the rest of the day.

Runners - because they have hours to think about abstract stuff - can become a bit metaphorical about things. I have - I want my runs to be run well. And I want my life to be lived well. In many ways, I limp through life - not training, not improving, but simply willing myself forward one day, one step at a time. I don't think that is what God has called us to. I want to be the guy running fast and strong, and to be the guy living boldly and purposefully. Both of those take the right amount of training, the right amount of attitude, and the right amount of work.

I'm sore today - my back and knees hurt. It's a good reminder that you pay for not training well. I also want for that same lesson to make it's way over to my spiritual life and really every other aspect of my life. It's time to train, time to work, time to stretch myself farther than I have, and time to get better.

It's time to run well

The Darkness is Passing

2011-04-23T19:15:00.001-07:00

On Holy Saturday, the world is dark. For the disciples everything had come undone. Rome, the beast, they had won. Peter had said they had nowhere else to go, but to Jesus, and now even Jesus was gone, victim to the violence of Rome, the corruption of the High Priests and the temple and the cowardice of his friends.

For the disciples, Saturday was indeed a dark day

in The Lord Of The Rings, I always struggle through Sam and Frodo's journey across Mordor. The darkness and dryness of the land infects the reader. It's oppressive. In one passage, they're resting as best they can, the weight of their journey and their burden crushing them more each day.

Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Hope is a powerful word. It is manipulated by corporations and political structures - we begin to seek it in things which can never deliver it. But when it is grounded in reality, it becomes sustaining. For Sam, it was the perspective on the fleetingingness of Sauron's power. Post-Easter, it is the utter meaningfulness of everything.. Without the resurrection, there can be no higher meaning. After the resurrection, every single moment is infused with meaning.

Today, we ponder the darkness. Ponder what exactly Jesus did. And is doing. And will do. That, like Sam's star, guides us, and pushes us through Saturday, and every "Holy Saturday" of our lives.

Right into Sunday.

What I'm Listening To - Unida Cantina

2011-04-21T17:48:00.001-07:00

I'm a big Roger Clyne fan (seriously, last week new Foo Fighters album, this week a new Roger Clyne album, and 2 weeks a new Flogging Molly? The world really must be ending), though in an entirely different way than I'm a Foo Fighters or Metallica fan. Those two bands were bands I got into when I first got into music. Loved em. They introduced me to power and volume and melody and stage presence. They influence everything I do on guitar. Clyne, though, is someone I feel like I've grown up with. When I was in college I listened to his first band - The Refreshments - and loved his tongue-in-cheekiness, pop-rock writing and the extreme melodrama. During that band and the first 3 Peacemakers (his current band) albums, he was really wrestling with the death of his friend and his feelings in all that.

As I've grown older - graduated, got jobs, bought houses, etc - Clyne has as well. What used to be songs about getting drunk and lamenting death and meditating on beauty have given way to songs about being married, having kids and living in the suburbs. He hasn't in anyway given up those other things - except maybe the lamenting death part. It seems about the release of "No More Beautiful World," he had worked out his demons about his friend dying and the melodrama edge was gone from a lot of his music. He is still profoundly looking for beauty and love and still loves drinking and celebrating life, it's just that, like me and all the rest of us, he has gotten older, and so his perspective on those things has widened and deepened."Unida Cantina" is that through and through. It's an album about life in middle age - celebrations in back yards, and friends and families and how goodness is centered in those things. It's become key to his vibe - life and love and perfection is found in his community - he'd include his fans in that - and in rock and roll. And rock and roll is what he does and does best. His sound, as always is, uniquely his. On his first album, someone described him as "not country, in the same way that Lyle Lovett and Steve Earl aren't country" and it's a perfect description. This album fine tunes again Clyne's perfect mix of 90s rock (think Gin Blossoms and Springsteen, and odd mix, I know)), Mexican (think Los Lobos) and Country, though certainly less of the country sound with each album. (He's taken to recording and hanging out in a little town called Puerto Penasco, and his music has as much of a carribean edge as country)

If you've liked Roger Clyne's stuff, you should get this album. It is a thoroughly Roger Clyne album. (If you've never listened to them, I would start with Americano, or even Sonoran Hope and Madness) This is also a SUPERBLY summer album. It moves, it celebrates, it has a breeze and easiness to it. It feels like sitting on my back porch - or even better a boat - drinking a beer and talking with friends. Underneath that. he always has something interesting to say, and so when you have time to investigate his lyrics, that is always time well rewarded.

This is good rock and roll. It's honest, it's true, it's his real life. Whenever you see him, or them, whether it's in concert or online, they live just like they sing. It's light enough to be good listening music, and deep enough to make you ponder and think. It's the kind of music that feels like an old friend, and a welcome one, as winter gives way to spring and summer is coming. It's music to drink beer to, and to celebrate life to. And best of all, there's none of the pretentiousness which has come to dominate so much, especially, of independent (the Peacemakers are an independent album) music. Thank all that's good for that.

What I'm Listening to - Wasting Light

2011-04-14T20:06:00.001-07:00

There's an ongoing debate in my head, which i have to have all the time, about who my favorite band is. For years, it would have unquestioningly been Metallica. Then they released St. Anger, and even I, who had stuck it out with them through "Load" and "Reload," had to start asking myself hard questions. Always in the running is Roger Clyne, Flogging Molly, Guns N' Roses and the Foo Fighters.

So when Grohl and company dropped Wasting Light tuesday, this debate was reignited (and has been complicated by how much I liked Metallica's Death Magnetic). And it's time the Foo Fighters were getting their due.

Wasting Light is a masterpiece. It's them at their best, from start to finish. First off, let's get rid of the nonsense about them and punk. In every review i read, something is mentioned about their punk roots or sound. This band has never sounded nor acted like (thank God) a punk band. they don't go in for the punk elitism, nor the punk uniform, nor the punk disdain, and at the risk of alienating all the cool kids, they're simply better musicians than anyone who's ever been in the punk scene. The Foo Fighters are straight up and straight ahead rock and roll. The only band I think doing music today on the stage they are that should be mentioned with them is U2 - no one makes a bigger sound as consistently as the Foo Fighters do. And like U2, this band manages to walk the line of integrity with people who worry about "selling out" and making immediately accessible music. They haven't been doing it nearly as long as U2, nor with the variety of music forms U2 has used, so it's probably too early to say they're better than them, but I like Foo better than U2 so that ultimately wins out for me.

Best track on the album so far for me is "Walk." The Foo Fighters have completely mastered the art of building a full album, and the biggest trick to that is the last track. I don't care about your singles - of course your singles are good. But how is the song you bury at the end, which it's assumed people won't get to? And on EVERY album, the Foo Fighters last song is great. "Walk" is no exception - it's perfectly them - asthmatic, singable, big and filled with tension and resolve.

The rest of the album moves up and down, raw to polished, melodramatic to fun. I love "Dear Rosemary" and I love "Miss the Misery." But I'm wiling to bet that the more i listen, the more I'm going to like each song. that's right, i'm a fanboy. There's no weak link here.

Acceptable Obsessions

2010-11-18T12:56:00.001-08:00

So the 7/8 Harry Potter movie comes out today. If my facebook feed is to be the ultimate judge of peoples experience (and I can't see why it wouldn't be), then a lot of people are preparing themselves for a pretty epic experience.

This amount of hype brings out haters, of course, and it intrigues me a bit. I get that some people just like to tear down stuff others are excited about (the term is called trolling, and I even see the joy people get out of it, in a 12-year old kind of way). But I think I see a level of hostility towards people devoted to Harry Potter (or any other sci-fi/fantasy fans - gotta rep my LotR friends) that we don't see towards, say, sports fanatics.

If a huge group of people were to dress up in coordinated uniforms to go see the Bengals Sunday, would they get the same scorn Harry potter fans get? Ok, maybe they would, because no one should be a dedicated bengals fan. So let's use Ohio State as an example. Hundreds of thousands of people (most of whom never went to that school) will dress up in scarlet and grey and spend an entire Saturday 100% dedicated to this team of boys whom they've never met. Their day will be. made or ruined by the performance of 50+ strangers. People will drink themselves into a comatose state, all surrounding this 4 hour football game. And they do it 12 or 13 times a year. The average OSU (though it applies to most other teams in most other sports) fan is WAY more dedicated and fanatical than the average Harry Potter fan.

But you don't see the fanatical sports person getting straight-up mocked like we do Harry Potter and other sci fi fans. In fact, I'd say the level of sports fanaticism gets a pass that NO ONE else gets - music fans, video game fans, comic book fans, etc. It seems as if socially we expect everyone to grow out of those fandoms, but as an adult you're allowed to maintain sports fanaticism without any social mockery (unless, like I said, you're a bengals fan. We are to be pitied)

Look, I love rabid fanaticism. I do - being at UC last year when they're football team was tearing people up, being at the bengals playoff game last year, watching this city go nuts over the reds this year - those are all fantastic experiences. All I'm saying, is that it's just as cool that people get really into Harry Potter or Star Wars or Halo or whatever else people get fanatical about. There simply is no difference between the people going to see HP at midnight tonight and people who dress in their teams colors for gameday.

Except reality tv. If that's you're thing, you're a threat to your neighbor and yourself, and you need to be stopped.

See ya in another life, brotha

2010-05-27T12:37:00.001-07:00

So Lost ended this week. And I loved it. It was a fantastic ending to the show, the kind of ending which changed the entire way you watched the entire show, that made you rethink everything you knew about the show from the beginning while at the same time remaining true to the show and it had always been. There are a million internet pages out there analyzing the show, so I'm not gonna contribute to that.

But the show ending did show me some interesting things about people. Check this out. It's from the Cincinnati Enquirer's question of the day, and was posted at the end of the season finale

so, people are discussing lost, and people like this felt the need to come in and take a swipe at the show. and it wasn't just there (though, the comments section of the Enqurier is filled with the most depraved and evil cross section of humanity one could assemble), it was on Facebook, it was on messageboards. everywhere, there was someone who was going out of their way to make sure that everyone knew that they didn't like Lost, and that people who did were probably dumb.

my question is, why? what's the point? so here's something a BUNCH of people are into - what does someone get from being just snarky about that something, that they aren't even invested in? I get if you watched Lost and hated the episode. that's cool. but the amount of people who said, "I never watched it, but that show was horrible," or "i read a one paragraph synopsis, and can tell it was stupid" astounded me, and I can't figure out what they get from it.

now, lest anyone think i'm taking the moral high ground here - there's tons of TV I can't stand. i don't watch reality TV (my brilliant wife loves celebrity apprentice. i hang my head in shame), refuse to watch cable news shows. And, at times, I'll not like something just because it's popular (I hated Dave Matthews all the way through college). But I don't understand, and I definitely don't want to be, the kind of person who goes through life tearing other people's joy away from them. I'm confused by folks who do, and i'm working real hard not to be that kind of person (that means, no more making fun of Jared's obsession with the Backstreet Boys).

And, Lost was awesome. if you disagree, you're a stupid monkey.

Fin

2010-05-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

Another semester finished. Only 57 more graduate hours to go for my degree.

57.

57.

at 6 hours per semester, 12 a year, that's close to 6 years.

shoot me.

How the Flying Pig almost made me an atheist

2010-05-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I ran the Flying Pig Marathon which was the culmination of 4 and a half months of grueling work for me. It was emotionally and physically destructive - today I'm hobbling around the house like an 80-year old man wondering why anyone does this to themselves.

One of the real highlights of the Pig in cincy is the amazing crowd support. The monsoon we got yesterday put a damper on the dozens of bands and entertainers along the route, but even with the rain, there wasn't a section of the race where people weren't out cheering for you. Mariemont had DJ's spinning records on loud PA systems out of their garage. Some guys in Fairfax had a beer-for-runners table set up. Everytime I felt like giving up, some stranger told me that I could finish and that they believed in me. This organization has figured out how to really encourage people and how to create a community out of this grueling activity. The church I work at joined in with dozens of other churches along the route to provide music and encouragement to runners (this pic is me hitting the 12 mile mark, at Legend's booth) since the race came right through our community. If nothing else about the pig was worth it, watching the community - the whole community, including churches and businesses and families and groups and, well, everyone - come together was awesome. And I like being cheered for.

So, you get the picture right? the 4,000+ people running the full marathon, the nearly 11,000 running the half and another 2,000 in the relay are engaging in one of the most significant physical activities of their lives, oftentimes in adverse weather. And to keep them going, thousands and thousands of members of the community come out to cheer, to give them food and drink (a fresh orange at mile 22 is heavenly) and to keep pushing them on. Well, as I get between mile 5 and 6, I'm feeling really good, enjoying the scenery (even with the rain), hitting my stride and ahead of my pace, and I've just started the longest and hardest hill in the course. I'm mentally preparing myself for this grueling 3 mile climb. And then I see him.

He's a guy. He's not, from the look on his face, happy to be there, which can be forgiven due to the rain. And he's holding a sign, bold enough that it grabs my attention. It says, "Calvary was a real hill." And right then and there, I almost became and atheist. I wanted to go across the barrier, smack him in the head, and make him run to the top of this hill with me.

It's not that i disagree with him. Of course as a pastor, I recognize the amazing work that was done at Calvary. But what is the point of his sign? At best, it says, "this difficult thing you're going through isn't really hard," which is disheartening and infuriating. And, my real question is, what does the sign accomplish? Who, at mile 6, stopped and made a decision to become a follower of Jesus because of this sign? Who had that life changing epiphany? And, if I as a Christian and someone who agrees with him wanted to punch him in the nose, what does someone who has nothing to do with Christianity think about it?

Why is it that for some folks, the chance to love people and encourage them and serve them isn't enough? Why is it that they have to attach some guilt or something else to their 'encouragement' or love of people? I don't understand the motivation (what they get from doing it) and I don't understand the payoff.

Thankfully, this wasn't my experience with the race. The church groups were loud and loving and having fun in the rain and muck with all the runners, being beautiful examples of what it means to love people. It's a good reminder, though how we have to be careful how our messages can be taken in multiple ways, and always to be mindful of our audience, maybe even more so than our selves.

Demographics and the Church

2010-04-28T11:30:00.001-07:00

This conversation keeps coming up. It comes up with new people who come to Legend. It comes up with people I go to seminary with. It comes up with church planters (it comes up with Church planters a LOT). Everyone wants to know who our target audience for the Church is. Who are we trying to "reach."

The answer is everyone, and no one. We wish, and want, and pray for, more people to come to our church. I believe in this church - this community - and would happily recommend it to anyone who was looking to become a part of a community. And because that is true, we aren't trying to reach anyone, in particular anyway. We believe the community is true when it is real, and that means it includes everyone. I know a lot of how the church does work has been influenced by people who are business people and advertising people and that those things are important. Or at least, I'm told that good business and advertising principles are important. and I know that many people buy into them.

But what if they're not?

The church did just fine for thousands of years without market research and demograhpics. The church did just fine without identifying its community's 'felt needs' and trying to position itself to meet those needs and then lure people into the church after you've done something for them. What if all these advertising techniques - which ultimately will constantly be failing as societies develop immunities to them - are actually harming the Church?

Today, I went to pay Legend's rent at the Oakley Community Center and I got to talk to Ms. Harris, who is always working the front desk there. The Community Center doubles as a senior center which serves a lot of the folks who live in the retirement center behind there. Ms. Harris is constantly telling them how much she likes us and our church and encouraging the senior citizens who come into the center to go to Legend on Sunday morning. Well, 2 folks have started coming every week. And they're probably 40 years older than the other folks at Legend. But, according to Ms. Harris, they love coming to church here and she is beyond excited that they're coming.

IF we were a "smart" church, with all our demographics work done, and if we were a "smart" church with all of our advertising geared appropriately and if we were a "smart" church reaching out to our demographics' felt needs, these two other women (and, I believe, the others who will come with them) would a. be an after thought at Legend and b. probably not really be at home here. These two people would fall between the cracks of marketing and advertising which have so engulfed the church that everything we build is organized around demographics and the public's fleeting tastes.

But we're not. And assuredly, there are consequences we face for not doing that - we aren't growing as "fast" as we "could." We aren't as organized as we should be. But in some profound ways, I think, we're building a community that is true and real because it reflects a real community, where 20-something hipsters regularly interact with 30-something yuppies who are interacting with 70-something senior citizens all of whom are watching out for the 3-5 year olds who are running around getting into things on Sunday mornings.

And I'd much rather be a part of that, than of a constructed group of people based around some demographic interests that wall street created.

Within a mile of home

2010-04-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

This is probably going to be overly dramatic.

I ran 7 miles today. My pace sucked - at 9:43 miles, today's 7 mile
run was the same pace as my 21 mile run on Saturday. In the grand
scheme of things, that's probably ok, given that my body still feels
like it's going through a substantive recovery process. But I really
hate not showing immediate improvement - I have little patience as my
body tries to catch up.

As I spend hours of my life on the various streets and in the various
neighborhoods of Cincinnati (a whole book needs to be written about
the culture shock of going from mariemont to Linwood/The East End
within 3 miles), I'm finding that running is teaching me quite a bit
about myself.

I find I'm easily discouraged. There's a moment in long runs -
normally the bottom of a long hill - where my brain breaks. The step
after that one is amazingly difficult. My body wants to quit in the
worst way. It doesn't take much to crush me while I'm running, and
long runs provide lots of opportunities.

I'm stubborn as hell. If I'm real honest, the reason I keep going is
because it's absurd what I'm doing and I refuse to let myself fail.
I'm not fast, I'm not even a good-form runner. I wonder if the only
true solution to discouragement is bull-headedness.

My environment has a significant impact on my performance. My runs are
faster to heavy metal then they are to rap. I run better in the cold
than heat. I run better through Eden park than through the east end,
based on scenery I think.

Runnin in some ways feels like school. It takes to much time, leaves
me exhausted and people ask me why the hell I'm doing it. But I find
myself thinking and growing and changing (and, I lost around 20 lbs!)
and working through something difficult. But I find myself an
extremist, needing to go to ridiculous lengths.

And for some time - an hour today, 3.5 hours Saturday, hopefully only
4 hours on may 2 - some of the buzz in my brain stops. Something in
running - something in accomplishing something big - satisfies the
ongoing roar in my brain. That's a good thing.

Out like a lamb...

2010-04-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

Well, there went a month. How did March manage to move that fast?

It's always a busy month. My birthday always starts March off with a weekend I don't remember, and thanks to some friends being overly generous with their shots, this March was no different. Man, am I getting too old for nonsense like that.
Then there was St. Patrick's Day.

This year I actually DID remember all of St. Patrick's day, which is a good thing. I got to hang out with some amazing friends who took shifts babysitting me during the day.
We went to the Hueston Woods Maple Syrup Festival and reconnected with some of the best friends I've ever had, and 10 years, and multiple kids and career changes didn't impact any of that. they're still some of my best friends in the world. that's a cool thing.
We had a party celebrating Kim's dad's retirement. My friend Burgdorf had a party that involved a pound of sausage wrapped in another couple pounds of bacon. We went to a Cincinnati Beer festival, which involved my hot wife bull riding.

In short, every weekend had something big going on. We had great friends and family who babysat for us, we got to hang out with great friends. We spent some great times with our kids outside, meeting new neighbors. I ran 108 miles in March, and my mile time is down over a minute since I started. I love that Cincinnati really comes alive in the Spring. This Sunday is Easter, and we're doing an Easter egg hunt with the boys, and maybe building a swingset. My friends are out and about, and it's good to sort of be alive again, after months inside.

I try really hard to think about profound things to say on a blog - otherwise, why waste my time writing, and your time reading? But this month, I'm really glad that the profound things in my life were in hanging out with my friends and just being.

Community

2010-02-23T11:08:00.000-08:00

I feel odd for saying it, but I found some of the best community I've
ever experienced amongst 500 bearded men on the Internet.

That came to a culmination this weekend as Justin, Eric and I went to
an all-weekend celebration commemorating the ending of this and
(regretably) all Whiskerinos in Nashville (Nashvegas) known simply as
the Throwdown.

It's a three-day practice in surreality 200 members of the total 500,
plus assorted wives, friends, etc pack into various and random
Nashville establishments. The vast majority of them are introverts,
and so the social interaction can be, well, a bit odd. Most of us
have only ever interacted via computer, and there are 5-10 celebrities
within the community.

All that being said, Mackle (the originator and genius of all this)
has created something profound here. In Nashville, and on the
Whiskerino site, there is a total diversity of people. Here the young
and the old, the artsy and the non-artsy (what's a good word there?),
the jock and the nerd, the male and the female, (yup) the black and
the white, people from every time zone, from a variety of careers and
even countries, all have managed to come together in something
profound, where this one insignificant thing - growing a beard - has
transcended every other classification these folks either choose or
have had chosen for them.

Maybe it's something more than the beard - maybe in the throwing off
of societal expectations or even something deeper about ideas of
masculinity - but something here has created a profound community.
Here people are welcomed for exactly what they are, no more, no less.
There is social regulation of behavior - the community can be harsh
for overstepping bounds - there is love and joy and celebration and
mourning. In short, something that looks an awful lot like what I
think should life should look like.

But what I realized this weekend was that for this to be real -
ultimately - it has to be real. It has to be in person, has to have
flesh and blood with it. Virtual communities are important and
interesting things, but they will never be able to replace the real
deal. The question becomes, how do real communities become the place
that whiskerino is in day to day life.

I can't do this..

2010-02-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

So sunday night no one showed up at Habits, so I hung out at the bar
for a bit, and watched the winter Olympics. Normally I don't watch a
ton of sports, and the Olympics fall to the bottom of my list, but
this week, it's been on and it's been captivating.

But I don't think I could make a habit of watching this. The
atleticism is amazing. The talent, the hard work, ridiculous. But last
night, I watched a Korean short track skater take out a teammate and
screw his team out of a sweep. Tonight I saw a couples ice skate team
fall and saw their coach unable to look at them in their failure.

I can't handle the heartbreak of these peoples' failures.

Watching a lifetime of hardwork dissipate on one false step.
Watching the weather sabotage someone lifetime goals. Watching the
guilt of responsibility fall on the teammate who botched it - I can't
handle it.

Maybe empathy is as much of a curse as it is a blessing (though for
some odd reason, I don't empathize with the winners. Too long as a
Bengals fan I suppose), I dunno. The weight of having your whole
life's work come to one critical moment, where a million variable
including your own screw ups could wreck it all, I don't know how
these people do this. I can barely stand to watch.

I don't handle failure well. At least I don't fail on intl tv.

And someone tell the Canadians that a Canadian winning the gold
doesn't make Canada suck any less. Hosers.

Top Albums of the Decade

2010-02-05T10:43:00.000-08:00

I've been putting this list off for the past month, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm still not sure that I believe that the decade ends in the 9 year - 2010 feels to me like it's still a part of the first year of the 2000s, but apparently I'm wrong on that. Secondly, lists are subjective things. Criteria differs, my mood changes day-to-day, so objects on the list may change. But, it gives me something to write about, so I'll go ahead and ignore that objection.

So, here are my top 10 albums of the decade. If you disagree, you're wrong, and you should spend some time in meditation, contemplating how you could end up so far afield from the truth. As for the list, these are the albums that have been the most important to me over the past 10 years as I listened to music.

10. Americano - Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers
I love this band. I loved them when they were the Refreshments, and I love them now. And I love how they've grown up - I love the songs about loneliness and about dying and about deserts and about drinking. I can't think of anyone who can turn a phrase and say more in one line than Roger Clyne, with the possible exception of Paul Simon. And all of those elements of this band - their sound, their writing, their wit - all of it comes together perfectly in Americano. Before this album, they were growing up. After it, they moved on past the issues and ghosts that had haunted Roger Clyne's song writing since the late 90s. On Americano, though, it all came together in perfection. This album is beautiful and poetic and fun and the kind of album that Someone like me who is way to into their music and way to into liking bands that on one else likes can love, and someone who just causally listens to music and could care less about depth or any of that silly nonsense can love as well. It's that good.

9. Phrenology - the Roots
This is my 2nd favorite hip-hop album ever. I love that the roots have actual musicians, are connected to hip-hop's true roots (ignore the pun) and still push the envelope sonically and lyrically when so much hip-hop is cookie cutter and drab. This album is fantastic - I listen to Rock You at least once every time I run, and especially for a kid who grew up as white and middle class as I could grow up, the Roots throw up a serious challenge to any pre-conceived ideas about what hip hop culture or African-American culture is really like, without softening the message (I'm looking at you Will Smith), the image or the sound. And, their drummer's name is "?uestlove." That may be the best name in all of music history.

8. All That You Can't Leave Behind - U2
I'll say it. And I know it'll make me unpopular with music critics (who no doubt tune into this blog for my witty insight on a regular basis), but I'll still say it. U2 sucked in the 90s. Zooropa and Pop were abominations of crap - techno isn't good as an art form, and U2 is better than that. I get what they were trying to do - I get deconstructing their fame, and I get mocking a materialist culture. I do. But a. I don't buy it for a second from them because they keep raking in money and b. when your art gets so inaccessible that the message is lost in the medium (which is exactly what happened to U2 in the 90s) then it ceases to be art. So, U2's all that you can’t leave behind was simply a breath of fresh air. It was them as a rock and roll band, them ferocious, them as honest social critics again, them having fun again. This album was the best thing U2 had done in years, and it's amazing.

7. Modern Times - Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is the man. And for a long time in his career his lack of rhythm drove his sound, but recently, Dylan has added an incredible rhythm section that gives his lyrics the foundation they deserve. Dylan's song writing is getting better (political writing is beneath him - he's smarter than that and the world needs to deal with more important things) with age and his perspective is amazing, coupled with amazing things that he does with the English language. Check out Thunder on the Mountain for just how good this gets.

6. Rush of Blood to the Head - Coldplay
I know, I'm supposed to be too cool to like Coldplay. It's as pop music as pop music gets, no one gets more hype than them, I know, I know. But whatever you think about Coldplay, their sound defined the better part of this decade for pop music. And for TV bumpers. and for advertisements. Everyone was trying to mimic the sound that Coldplay was doing. And I for one, spent the better part of the decade calling Coldplay the band that will always be "the band that sounds sort of like U2," but truth be told U2 hasn't sounded like this in a long time. Chris Martin writes incredibly catchy songs, and their music, like it or not, adds depth to a dreary and shallow pop music world. It's true that every Coldplay album (until Viva La Vida, incidentally) sounds the same, but that's because this sound works.

5. Death Magnetic - Metallica
I'm going to say something that pains me very much to say. Metallica sucked from 1996 until 2008. I'm the fan boy - I'm the guy who made every excuse. I went to every concert. And, I still contend that Load or Re-load from any other band but Metallica would have been classic albums. But this is Metallica. They are in that upper echelon of bands like the Stones or Zeppelin. They're so big, that they have outgrown themselves. And except for flashes of brilliance on their symphony CD, they did nothing during the first decade of this millennium. And that's unfathomable to me. If Load and Re-load were decent albums, just not Metallica, then St. Anger was an abomination and should be stricken from the record as never having existed. And so when Death Magnetic was announced, I was skeptical. But the fan boy in me could not keep from buying a membership to their website. It couldn't stop me from pre-ordering the album by several months. And when it hit, when the explosiveness of "that was just your life" ripped through my stereo, I felt - honestly - like I was back in 8th grade again (when their Black album came out). Death Magnetic had the power, the technical skill and the ferocity that is Metallica and this time they'd managed to do it without sounding either dated, or like they didn't care anymore. This album is perfect from beginning to end, and my psyche needs - NEEDS - Metallica to be the best band in the world. And Death Magnetic proves again, they are.

4. Black Album - Jay Z
Let’s be real honest - jay-z is the rapper all other rappers want, or should want, to be like. The man is obviously brilliant, and would be if you took his rap career away from him. On the black album, he drops his tour de force, the album djs LOVE to mix with other albums, and he does so over top of an incredible backdrop of sounds that you simply don't hear anywhere else. Jay z isn't my favorite rapper (being a white guy, I like stuff that white people like), but he's undeniably the top of this game. And the black album is his signature at that peak.

3. A Collision is Coming - David Crowder Band
This is the album that made me realize - that Christians can in fact produce good music. Not just good music - but great music. While even Crowder's stuff had flirted with really well in the past, nothing he did (or has done) came close to this album. It is musically incredibly complex, lyrically thought provoking, saying old things in new ways and saying new things profoundly. It is honest in a way few Christian - esp. successful Christian artists - are, and perhaps the most profound thing I can say is that this album challenged and beat the nagging cynicism I feel towards almost anything marketed as ‘Christian.’ There is nothing else in music that sounds like this album, no one else in pop culture thinking or talking like him, and for that alone this album deserves special attention.

2. Chinese Democracy - Guns N' Roses
The world needs Guns N' Roses. They have always been amongst the most dangerous bands of all time, incapable of saying or doing anything at anytime, and when they went away after Illusion I and II, it was amongst the most disappointing ends of a fabulous career that pop music could have endured. Guns N' Roses was the closest thing anyone my age had seen to Led Zeppelin - powerful and poppy and ferocious and childish and big and small and electric and acoustic and un-categorizable, but they were gone. And then, 17 years later, Axl, with an entirely different band, manages to capture the same energy and feel and power that was Gn'R when I was in junior high school, and somehow manages to do it with a sound that doesn't sound like some bad reunion for old aged rockers who are simply out of money (I'm looking at you, Paul McCartney). This is Guns both as Guns should always be, and Guns pushing the envelope of what a rock band sounds like.

Of course, they've gone AWOL again, and no one knows if we'll ever hear anything from Guns N' Roses ever again.

1. The Rising - Bruce Springsteen
This was the album that America needed post 9/11. The tone of the album, the lyrics, the fact that Springsteen is from the New York area - when America struggled to make sense of what exactly 9/11 meant, Springsteen was able to blend mourning and grace and loss and hope all together with something so exclusively American (and, the E Street Band certainly ranks up there with the greatest of American Rock bands of all time), that nothing else seems to come close. It is a perfect album - there are no flaws to it, and it came at the perfect time

Back to School

2010-02-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

Today I sat through 3 hours of Greek, listening to the various ways one can decline 3rd Declension Adjectives a voice rang loudly through my head, asking me why I, not only put myself through this, but pay to do it. And while it's a question I ask myself in my darkest hours (which always revolve around Greek), it's also a question that constantly is asked by my friends.

And, let's be upfront right now. Seminary won't make me a better Christian - it won't make me a more devoted follower of Jesus. It won't make me better suited to do what Jesus has called me to do. It won't help me to identify with and empathize with and then stand up for the marginalized and the oppressed like Jesus does. It won't make me the leader of the Church that I need to be. And, there's a very real danger, judging many of the products of various seminaries that I have seen, that it will do the opposite of those things - that it will make me jaded and angry and bitter and frustrated with the church. I may very well retain my career in the Church with a seminary degree. But I may be damaged in the process.

So, why do it? Well, first of all, if anyone expects seminary to make anyone any of those things I've listed above, the failure isn't on the part of seminaries, it's on the fault of people asking those questions. not that they aren't the goals of any Christian I know - seminary just isn't designed for that. What seminary does and is doing and will continue to do, is teaches me to think and to realize that this entire christianity thing is a massive deal. I have stepped into the same field of study as people like St. Augustine, Martin Luther, the Apostle Paul, John Paul II, Bob Dylan, and literally thousands and thousands of other people - most of them MUCH smarter then me - who have wrestled with what God is like and how that plays out in our lives. Seminary is helping me to read Iraneaus and Marcion and N.T. Wright and the Church fathers, and, yes, even the Bible, and to take the depth and breadth of knowledge of not only the bible but also of God and of Jesus and the world and how all that works. and doing that in the context of dozens of other people who think in RADICALLY different ways than I do is good for me ultimately.

The second facet of this is that I hate the anti-intellectualism that is so rampant in the Church. God made us thinking beings. With brains. And he made us in community with other people so that we can learn from their thoughts and their experiences. And so much of, especially the American church, has delved into this sickening idea that we don't need to think about things, that this amazingly complex idea that Jesus was teaching about, and this amazingly complex document that it's all recorded in that we call the Bible is simple on its surface and none of that is true. Christianity - like most everything else - is hard. It's complex. It's deep. And we should not only be thoughtful and intelligent about it, we should wrestle with it.

now, i'm not saying everyone has to go to seminary to be a Christian. I don't even think everyone should go to seminary. But these are the reasons I'm going. I like to learn. I like to read. I like to interact with people. I like to struggle with ideas that aren't my own. At the end of the day, that makes all of it - the cost, the stupid Greek classes, the endless writing - worth it. I'm still going to complain about it, but at the end of the day, it's worth it.

I hope. . .

Gov't Mule live in Cincinnati

2010-01-30T07:42:00.000-08:00

Last July, I went to the Rothbury Music Festival in Michigan. I actually fully intended to blog about it then - it was one of those rare experiences where I went somewhere and spent an inordinate amount of time alone (if one can be alone surrounded by 50,000 hippies) and it was a big deal in my life last summer. My grandfather actually died the week I got back and I got wrapped up in family stuff, so I didn't blog about it, which is a shame. You can see pictures of adventures up in the great north at flickr. some of the best pictures I've ever taken, I think.

Anyway, Rothbury got cancelled this year, which left me pretty bummed, so I was excited that Gov't Mule was playing in Cincy last night. They also played Rothbury, and I was hoping that I'd get to recapture a bit of that last night at the Taft Theatre.

First of all, I didn't. Gov't Mule (that's them at Rothbury) is amazing. And, they're amazing live - their studio albums are ok (they sound like themselves and no one else, and no one else sounds like them), but they're just an excuse to jam live. And seeing them last night, they were in top form musically. But, as I sit here listening to my bootleg of the Rothbury show, you realize how much energy they get from the festival scene and playing outdoor shows on glorious summer days.

Nevertheless, it was a fantastic show. Warren Haynes is a virtuoso guitar player - he is to me, I think, what Stevie Ray Vaughn was to folks 15 years older than me. He's every bit as good as Stevie Ray (he's a better singer) as a guitarist, and he's not trying to sound like them (there are no shortage of SRV rip offs). Haynes is in that rare group of guitarist that no one can sound like - people like Tom Morello, Jimi Hendrix, the Edge, etc. Where a million bad southern rock bands move around simple chords, Haynes (like the Allman Bros, who he came from) has a complex rhythm and chord pattern, that has more to do with jazz than it does with country, and it's rare to hear a white guy play and sing with soul like that. I can't talk about how good he is live, words don't do it justice.

Sometimes jam bands like this, who play 10 and 15 minute versions of songs can get lost, but that doesn't happen for Gov't Mule. Their set, while filled with guitar and drum solos, remains tight and interesting. It takes special musicians to make an 8 minutes jam session an interesting thing to watch, and they do. And, while they're all amazing musicians in their own right, they love to share the stage with friends from all kinds of genres of music, and so last night they invited Peter Frampton, who has sort of adopted Cincinnati as his hometown (why?) and he played a blistering blues set. it was fantastic.

All that to say, it's a joy to sit in the presence of greatness. And that's what Gov't Mule is - here are men who are the top of their craft and form. No body tries to do what they do, because no body has the skill set. and when they play a 12 minutes guitar solo, it's not indulgent or pretentious, it's because these guys love the music, and their fans love their music, and people can just hang out.

At the end of the night, people were worn out - Kim and I certainly were. And after a ridiculous medley of "Who do you Love" by Bo Diddley (if you think it's a George Thorogood, you're entirely too white) and "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin, they closed with Soulshine. It's in my top 10 songs of all time. And it pulled the 2,500 people from a mismatched group of stoned hippies and WNKU listening yuppies into one massive choir. I wish I wrote songs like this.

Crazy

2010-01-27T11:16:00.000-08:00

I was gonna write about something here, but got all distracted by the ipad launch today, and the either absurd joy it created as mac fans line up to give Steve Jobs money for whatever he designs, or apple haters go into shock and outrage. I'm amazed at how fired up people get about things which they should be relatively indifferent about. America needs something to focus on when an announcement of a product by a company gets people fired up, either way.

Anyway.

It's a weird time of year. I was talking to Justin today, and realized that for one reason or another, every insecurity I have has been raging out loud recently. I think for the most part I do a good job of keeping them locked down, and when not, I try and make sure that I'm in a position so that my crazy doesn't bother people. And while my theory is that ultimately everyone is crazy and just has to learn to manage it, it feels lately like I'm not doing that as well.

Thought I think most of the time, I simply over think things. Normally, when I really start to focus on myself, is when i notice how crazy I am. It may be time to start focusing on others.

____ it, Dude. Let's go bowling.

9 hours a day

2010-01-05T07:55:00.001-08:00

This week, I'm taking a class for my Master's degree, which is 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday, and then it's done for the semester (other than a 15-page research paper due about 6 weeks from now). The concept is an ok one - you get an entire semester's work done in about a week - but it's left me exhausted. Yesterday we studied 1 Peter 1 through 1 Peter 2:12. That's about 37 verses. Verse by verse. Sometimes Greek word for Greek word.

And I've decided that my brain cannot do that.

I wanted to despair yesterday. I'm fine in the morning, through the mid afternoon. but around 3 or 4, my brain just can't handle any more information. and yesterday the internet crashed and I didn't have anything to distract me as I tried to focus (my brain needs two things to focus on in situations like that - something meaningless and then what I'm supposed to be paying attention to).

I've been confronted by mental limits lately - every week I've been doing a long run - 8 miles the last two weeks, 10 miles this saturday - and have been amazed at how mental an exercise running is. I can do 8 miles pretty easily, simply because my brain is ready for hte fact that this is going to take an hour and 15 minutes or so, but sometimes during my 4 mile runs i want to quit. Somehow i managed to be more prepared for the long run mentally than I was the short, and so every week, the 8 mile run has been easier than the 4 mile.

It's one of the reasons I'm glad I'm back in school. School makes your brain work in a particular way. Not the only way, and not even the most important way, but certainly a way, and a way that ultimately is good for me.

Until around 4 pm.

2010

2010-01-01T18:24:00.001-08:00

Yeah, so I haven't blogged here since Lucas was born. Plenty of excuses for that - between school, and work, and a new baby, and a beard growing odyssey (round 3) have kept me plenty busy, but it's not really the amount of stuff I'm doing that kept me from writing, but more that lately when I get some downtime, I sit and do nothing. Even if I know i have a thousand things to do, I noticed a sorta ugly lazy streak in me at times this fall.

So, I hope to write more. 2010 is our first year where our family is complete. We know we don't want to have any more children after 2, so from now on things we do will be done with the idea of our family, which is sort of a big change in the way we think about things. School will continue indefinitely, I'm still trying to play music as much as possible, I've begun running a lot lately again, so hopefully that continues.

The question is, do i have anything to say?

Lucas Charles

2009-10-07T02:37:00.000-07:00

Lucas Charles joins the world at 5:09 am, weighing in at 7lbs 10 oz

here we go again

2009-10-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

a couple of years ago, I sat in a hospital room at University Hospital, writing blogs about waiting for Leo to be born. Kim was asleep because they'd just given her her epidural, and I was scared out of my mind.

it's 3:47 am, I'm sitting in a hospital room at Good Samaritan hospital. Kim's asleep because they've just given her her epidural. This time i'm not as (as..) scared as I was last time, but still in this surreal environment where the world has gone very still because you just wait for nature to do its thing. well, except for the epidural.

What it is

2009-09-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

So, one of the bands I'm in played Midpoint Music Festival this past weekend. It's one of the cooler festivals that I know of at least around here, and if you believe the press it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Anyway, close to 300 bands show up in cincy and downtown becomes a place with real live people for 3 nights of the year. Most of the bands are indie rock or alt country/roots bands, and for $25, you can see some of the best independent rock bands in the country.

I was really excited that we got to be a part of it - i like when there's something that feels like the entire city is experiencing together, and I get to be a part of that, especially if it's something I'm doing (as opposed to just going to watch). So when Jeff told us we were playing Arnolds on Saturday at 11, even if it was abusively late (I'm an old man, and Sunday mornings are work days), I was really excited to a part of something pretty universally recognized as "cool." It's also nice to be playing for people who just like music, and who just like to sit and listen to music, where you don't have to feel like you have to do anything entertaining other than playing.

Arnold's is a cool venue. It's the oldest bar in Cincinnati, and it has a fantastic outdoor patio with a great stage. It's where we were supposed to play - great environment, playing outside is always nice, it's hard to beat a gig like that. This picture is the first band playing, when we arrived.

So as we're loading in, i'm thinking how great they sound, how cool the environment is, and how much this is going to be. Then i notice that there is infrastructure for a building over top of the courtyard, so that they can make it a useable place in case of rain, or winter.

And about 15 minutes later it starts pouring down rain. Buckets and buckets of rain.

So we're sitting at the bar, listening to someone play some blues, wondering what we're going to do. they moved the guy playing inside, because it was just him and an acoustic guitar, but what are they doing to do with us? we're a full band - we need space, and stage monitors, etc. I tend to think we're pretty low maintenance as band's go, but we do need some things to play. But no, they moved us into Arnold's tiny dining room (no criticism here - there really was nothing else to do).

So we ended up crammed into that space. I had to sit on the piano (not the bench, the actual piano) below that neon sign. Dan (drums) was wedged into that back left corner and the door there in the middle was open to let some fresh air in, was between us. Jason (lead guitar) was next to me, Jeff (singing) was next to Dan, and the speakers were next to me on the piano. I couldn't hear the drums at all (what?), and Jeff's vocals and guitar were overriding everything (until we blew up the speakers they were using). It's a recipe for a disastrous gig right?

Turns out, I had more fun than I think I've ever had at a Lens Lounge gig. All 4 of us had to be constantly watching each other, because we couldn't hear each other. Instead of dropping into the normal routines of just playing the same songs we play and always play, we watched each other, improvised, we had fun playing with each other. Jason couldn't set up his pedal steel because of the room, so he played his beautiful Rickenbacker, and I had forgotten what a monster instrumentalist he is. At the end we sat at the bar and talked like friends.

it was a good reminder that things are a lot of fun when they're off schedule. Once things went out the window, all that was left was to have fun. I was forced to let go of my concerns, my worries, and for an hour, i just played bass. I played with other people, four of us became one, and we just had fun. there's probably (yeah, just probably) a bigger lesson for me in the rest of my life from Saturday night.

For those so inclined, a new Lens Lounge cd should be coming out soon.

Atmosphere

2009-08-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday night, I went to a Jimmy Buffet experience. Those of you reading outside the Cincinnati area may think this is a strange thing to write about - after all, who listens to Jimmy Buffet anymore? And you'd be right. But in Cincinnati, Buffet is a big deal. A huge deal - if you want to do "Cincinnati" things, Buffet is on par with Riverfest or Oktoberfest. And, rather than pay the simply outrageous price of $50 to sit on the lawn, we decided to take the boat out for the real party, on the river directly behind riverbend.

And as I drank beer and ate chicken wings, and marveled at the willingness of fairly attractive girls to take their clothes off, I came to this weird crossroads, where I think I might like Buffet more than I'd ever realized. Buffet's music used to really irritate me, but as I experienced Buffet, I came to have a different perspective of his music.

It's not because Buffet is an amazingly groundbreaking musician or songwriter (actually, it may because he's not). But as I sat there listening to his music, I was instantly transported to a specific time and place. The time and place c

an be sort of variant, but it almost always involves sun, and beaches, and good drinks and food, and fun music and people really enjoying themselves. Buffet's music isn't pretentious at all, and it exists merely for the sake of having a good time (oh, and making Jimmy Buffet an obscene amount of money). Other bands that I really like do the same thing - Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers make you feel immediately like you're living in the desert of southwestern Arizona, with nothing to do but think. Lucero makes you feel like you drank entirely too much whiskey in a bar in Memphis, because your life is falling apart. And Buffet, like I said, immediately transports you to a beach with some really good friends, where everything in life is right. Music that creates that sort of atmosphere is powerful and in and of itself good, and we could use more of it.

The boat we tied up to ended up being connected to a boat full of firefighters, who decided to come over and hang out with us on our boat, b/c we had the best stereo system. in the act of tying our boat to theirs, we immediately became part of their community. The community there, the atmosphere there, all of it led me to rethink my interpretation of Buffet. Music that creates community and atmosphere like that is something powerful, and music that exists to remind us that life can be fun, is something we need a whole lot more of.

Lotsa Music

2009-07-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Last night, for the first time, I played my stand up bass at Habits for close to 2 hours. My fingers really hurt from all that. Why, you may be asking, would I put myself through all that? Well, after a fairly lengthy hiatus, both bands that I'm in are playing this weekend!

Len's Lounge, after taking a break for Jason's (not me, pedal-steel Jason) transition into fatherhood in May, is playing at the Northside Tavern, in the front room on Thursday night at 9 pm. We practiced last week, and I think we sounded as good as we ever have. It should be a fun show.

Headphone, (see our videos in others posts on this blog) is playing at Stanley's Pub in the East End on Saturday night. For you early birds, we're the first band to play that night, so you could come out at 10 and catch us and leave, though the closing band that night, the Zachary Burns Band are simply fantastic - imagine the Black Keys fronted by someone with Jack Black's energy.

all in all, it's a weekend of great music! You should come check it out!

A Life Well Lived

2009-07-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

I haven't said anything substantive here in awhile (which of course begs the question of whether I've ever said anything substantive here), and lately, it hasn't been because i don't have anything to say, but rather because I've been sort of overwhelmed with new experiences and life and all of the things going on that I haven't had as much time as I'd like to pause and reflect and think on things. Between three vacations since May, a pregnant wife, a 2 year old son who is always learning and amazing me, a new church, and family stuff i'm sort of bowled over at this point by life.

Which has made this week all that much harder. My grandfather passed away on Wednesday. It wasn't a surprise, and in the grand scheme of things, it was probably for the better, and he's in a better place and he's at peace. I could rattle off platitudes at you for an hour on the passing of a loved one. People feel the need to say something in the midst of loss and pain, because the silence is an amazing reminder of loss and loneliness. But through all of it, I have amazing friends who love me and love my family and have taken good care of us, and I'm thankful for that.

Obviously, this week has caused me to reflect on my grandfather and his life and my life and how all that plays together towards something else. A lot of times, when someone dies, we look to the great things, the accomplishments of one's life to remember and to point to, I suppose, the value that they added to the lives of people around them. And it's always been in the back of my mind that I want to accomplish something truly great - I resonate with characters in movies who do noble and heroic and massive things and I've always seen myself in that light.

One of the things that really strikes me about my grandfather is not his greatness, not his amazingness, not all the things he had accomplished, but rather, the joy and faithfulness with which he lived a simple life. He loved his wife at a profound level, and he loved his children. He loved his grandchildren just as much, and then doted on his great-grandchildren. He worked hard, served his country, played softball. He made a bologna salad that was fantastic, and because I loved it every Christmas, it was at the house. When we needed picked up, or driven to school, he was there. Here is a man who loved deeply and faithfully, not dependent on what people did for him, but rather because he loved people and that's what he did, and as a result, was loved by almost everyone who knew him (I say almost b/c I assume it's possible that there was someone who he didn't like or didn't like him, but I never met them). You couldn't walk the streets of Hamilton, OH without him seeing someone he knew, and that meant a conversation followed.

What if that's what true greatness is? Not even in the loving people - all of us love people at some point, for various lengths of time - but the faithfulness with which he did that, year in, year out, with no regard for how tiring it is, no reservation about doing it, never an assertion of what he needed, but rather a constant look for what others needed. What if the greatness in our lives is not going to be measured in how much we did, or in what we accomplished, but in the people that we loved and served. What would it look like if I reoriented myself around that?

I'm thankful for my grandfather, and for how he was another example, put in my life, of what it means to be a man, and a husband, and a father, and a friend, to love people and to genuinely share in your life with others. It's a high bar for me to live by.

Headphone Part 2

2009-06-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

Almost done! Only 3 more videos to go

"My Favorite Game"

"Viva La Vida"

"My Girl"

"16 Tons"

Headphone

2009-06-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

I'm in a new band, Headphone, that originated out of the Open Mic Night at Habit's. The guys that host (drummer/singer in the video below) asked me to play bass. This is our first gig at the 20th Century Theatre - in late may we did a fundraiser for Habitat and the Musicians Resource Center. It gave me a chance to play with my video editing software. It's just one song, but hopefully more will follow!

video 2

Blogs

2009-06-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

I don't blog much anymore. I used to - if you go look at my Xanga site, I wrote a lot, I even used Myspace as a blogger, before realizing how horrible myspace in. Now, the closest I come to blogging is one sentence (or less) status updates on Facebook. There's probably a strong push of nihilism there, where i'm sure that the 400 (yes, i looked) friends or so that I have on FB are so interested in the day-to-day, even minute-to- minute activities that they read it. Don't lie - i know that you do.

The flip side of that i think a lot. I try to think through everything I say, everything I see, everything I experience. I try to see the nuances and subtleties of things that I would miss if i wasn't being more intentional. And I'd like to say that I see and experience those things and that then I can turn and write about them. But i don't. I may actually notice them, though not all the time, but even if I do, the complexity or beauty or subtlety or even the horror or evil of whatever i'm experiencing or thinking about that day gets lost in the mundaneness of day to day life.

That mundaneness can be really deadening. I start only seeing the day to day routines, i start dwelling on the fact that I'm really tired, I start drifting from one thing to the next. Today, I growled at Leo like a lion, and it was simply the best thing that ever happened to him. he let out the deep belly laugh and then made me do it again. and again. and again. for like 20 minutes. And when i'm wrapped up in the mundaneness, i miss that. and I need to work harder on not missing that.

Boundaries

2009-05-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation this week -the first time I've been on a real vacation in quite awhile. Kim's family paid for a beach house for their whole family - Kim, Leo and I, Kim's sister and her husband, her parents and her grandmother. It's been great hanging out with Leo on the beach, sitting and reading just for fun and not for school, taking the boat out on the Atlantic ocean, playing video games just for fun. It's hard for me to sit and do nothing without feeling incredibly guilty about it - but I'm learning.

This picture is a picture of me wake boarding on the Atlantic Ocean that Kim's sister took. It's a cool picture - as most wake boarding pictures tend to be - with the color and the spray and the water and the movement. I forget how much I love wake boarding and being out on the boat all winter long. Anyway, if you look at this picture, the most

amazing part of it for me is that behind me, there is nothing on the horizon. In fact, there's really nothing between me here in South Carolina and Spain at that point. I pulled the boat out to the mouth of the bay there and just stared at the ocean at one point and I was blown away by the immensity of it.

Much has been made about the perspective the ocean gives you. At once, you feel instantly small as this massive amount of water swallows you whole. Or, in the face of the steady rhythm of waves that started long before your race even thought of existing and will continue keeping time LONG after we've wiped ourselves out of existence, one naturally has some questions about their importance in the grand scheme of things.

But this week, as I sat there at the mouth of the bay, with dolphins swimming around my boat, one of the things I realized is that there's a part of me that hates boundaries. Only my pregnant wife and the risk to her pregnancy kept me from flooring the boat and seeing what it meant to get far enough away from land that I couldn't see anything. To be in a place where it's just you and those with you is an amazing thing. Words like freedom take on whole new meanings when you've shaken lose the barriers we create and are used to being surrounded by. I don't mean that in any sort of rah-rah-America-kicks-ass sort of way, but rather in a I-constantly-enslave-myself-to-stupid things kind of way - whether it's the issues in my own life, or the expectations of others, etc etc.

For a couple of hours Monday, i sat on the verge of the great wide open. It was a good reminder.

And done

2009-05-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

So I just finished my last assignment for the semester. Over the past two weeks, I've written 6 papers, for a total of around 120 pages. I've read more than I ever possibly could have thought to have read. It's one of the signs of my life that I have reached a stress point when I start getting canker sores (or cold sores? which is which? i have the non-herpes kind. :D), I've maxed out on my stress level and that has been the last few weeks for me. I also ran the flying pig 10k, and went to two midnight showings of movies (Star Trek was freaking fantastic). It's been a busy few weeks.

I've thought about 15 times over the last two weeks, "Oh, i should write a blog about that." But I never did. And now it's simply time for me to go on vacation. see you in a week

Higher Education My Ass

2009-04-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

So I had lunch with my friend Rodney and I was talking about this books I have to read for seminary, The Hermeneutical Spiral. It is, hands down (or so I thought at the time. A couple of other books have gone out of their way to prove that theory wrong) the worst thing I've read in a long time. Not because it's not true, but because it's incredibly slow reading - my average pace is about 55 pages per minute and in this book I'm doing 25 pages per minute, AND i have to write a 3 page summary of every chapter. All 22 freaking chapters. Anyway, Rodney asked me this interesting question, "do you hate Christianity" yet (or something along those lines). He had a fairly negative experience at seminary and I think partially assumes that I'm on that path.

Well, I assured him, I am not. I still like Christianity and, in fact, seminary is in some ways helping that. But this work load is going to fracking kill me. My classes have decided that the best way to teach me is through a crushing load of busy work - with no interaction whatsoever with the professor. One of them is ridiculously hard for a prereq that I've yet to meet someone who cares about it. One of them is amazing, and the other i'm sort of indifferent towards.

But the workload is going to kill me. By next monday (27-April), I have to read a book and write a paper on it, write a four 5-7 page papers, one three page paper, one 20 page paper, and write 45 pages of a 60 page paper. fml

What we do

2009-03-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

Just another Friday night

Get away

2009-03-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

so I've been noticing a pretty intense need for a vacation lately. I don't normally take vacations - i haven't had a real one since I went to the beach with Kim and Jared and Kim. I think that was in 2006. When we went to our Church planting assessment, the guy there believed that I was the kind of person who needed to take 10-day to 2-week vacations, because it takes me so long to let go of stuff, and I've found I have such a tight grip on things that I can't even contemplate letting them go for 10 days. But, this summer, I do have some vacations scheduled. In May, we're going to Ed isto, South Carolina with Kim's family. Her folks and her sister are going, so we're going to take Leo and the boat and go down for awhile. Then in June, I'm going to Cancun (I can never remember the resort) with the Dunns, the Doyles and the Bunns. And the newest one I think I just discovered is Rothbury music festival in July. As of right now, i may be going to this alone, (hint hint), but check out this ridiculous line up:

The Grateful Dead
Bob Dylan
Willie Nelson and Family
The Black Crowes
Les Claypool
Ani Defranco
Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys
Peter Rowan Bluegrass band w/Tony Rice
Son Volt
Matisyahu
Cold War Kids
Flogging Molly
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

and then a whole bunch of bands I've never heard of, but holy freakin crap! If you like music, esp live music, you should come to this with me!

Reclaiming Easter

2009-03-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

I know this is a long blog post, but it's what I've been thinking, and re-thinking, and then re-thinking about again this week. This past sunday at Church, I read maybe the most profound thing I've ever read. And i'd read it before, knew what it said, and used it for our communion meditation (We're focusing our communion thoughts on Lent currently). It has refined how I think and what I think about Easter and Lent (and really, all of Christianity). It's from a book - Surprised by Hope - which is probably the most profound book I've read in a long, long time. Anyway, N.T. Wright says:

For a start, consider Easter Day itself. It's a great step forward that many churches now hold Easter vigils, as the Orthodox Church has always done, but in many cases they are still too tame by half. Easter is about the wild delight of God's creative power - not very Anglican, perhaps, but at least we ought to shout Alleluias instead of murmuring them; we should light every candle in the building instead of only some; we should give every man, woman, child, cat, dog and mouse in the place a candle to hold; we should have a real bonfire; and we should splash water about as we renew our baptismal vows. Every step back from that is a step toward an ethereal or esoteric Easter experience, and the thing about Easter is that it is neither ethereal nor esoteric. It's about the real Jesus coming out of the real tomb and getting God's real new creation under way.

But my biggest problem starts on Easter Monday. I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days keeping Lent, pondering what it means, preaching about self-denial, being a t least a little gloomy, and then bringing it all to a peak with Holy Week, which in turn climaxes in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday . . . and then, after a rather odd Holy Saturday, we have a single day of celebration.

All right, the Sundays after Easter still lie within the Easter Season. We still have Easter readings and hymns during them. But Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after Morning Prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don't throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don't do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn't take much notice if Easer is celebrated as simple the one-day happy ending tacked onto forty days of fasting and gloom? It's long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in the Church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it's time to wake up. That always comes as a surprise.

And while we're about it, we might write some more good Easer hymns and take care to choose the many good ones already written that celebrate what Easer really is rather than treating it as simply our ticket to a blissful life hereafter. Interestingly, most of the good Easter hymns turn out to be from the early church and most of the bad ones from the nineteenth century. But we should be taking steps to celebrate Easer in creative new ways: in art, literature, children's games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don't have a New Testament; you don’t' have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins. We shouldn’t' allow the secular world, with its schedules and habits and parareligious events, its cute Easter bunnies, to blow us off course. This is our greatest day. We should put the flags out.

In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again-well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the ground ivy may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s' Lent for you. But you don't want simply to turn the garden back into a neat bed of blank earth. Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant about a few cuttings. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and a truly human being, then Easer should mean planting, watering and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time of balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. You may be able to do it only for six weeks, just as you may be able to go without beer or tobacco only for the six weeks of Lent. But if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might bring something of Easter into your innermost life. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that's what Easter is all about. (Wright, 255-256)

I hope and pray that Lent and Easter are renewing times for you. The earth is awakening as spring comes again - my prayer is for awakening and renewal for all of us, as well.

Face to Face

2009-03-11T05:12:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend the other day, and we both are in agreement that it irritates us when people think they "know us." As I type it, it sounds slightly junior-highish (it was much cooler when we were talking about it), but it boils down to, for whatever reason, when people judge us on our tattoos, or hairstyles, or clothes, and think that they can then assume things about us, it's irritating (being in Christian circles makes that infinitely worse). That context makes what I'm about to write a little better.

I really like Billy Joel and Elton John.

I mean, i'm not supposed to. When it comes to music, is there anything safer and more corporate than those two? Some of their songs have all the artistry of something by Celine Dion - songs written just to appeal to the vast middle, not in order to make you think, or experience a new emotion or feeling, or remember something deep, but simply to make money. And I'm the guy who likes Metallica, or Guns N' Roses, precisely because they're dangerous and not safe. I'm the guy who appreciates Johnny Cash for how he, while being the archetype, undermines traditional american culture. I like Eminem solely because he exists as a big middle finger to rap purists who can't deal with a white rapper and to the moral majority folks who have decided it's their job to tell the rest of us what to do.

But i can't help it. I do. Last night's concert at U.S. Bank Arena (A crap-hole of a venue) was the third time I've seen them since Kim and I started dating in 1994. Everytime, it's an amazing show. They are individually amazing musicians, they both still have fantastic voices, and they play their songs flawlessly. They have backing bands who are incredible, and (and this is a huge deal to me) their songs are different live than they are on the CD. "Levon" is one of my favorite Elton John songs and it ended with this long jam session last night, which was more reminiscent of a 70s rock band than it was the light rock fare that is normally associated with John. If i wanted to listen to a CD, I'd stay home and save myself the $100 - when I come to see a band live, I expect to get an experience I can't get somewhere else.

Interestingly, I'm a much bigger Elton John fan than Billy Joel fan, as it comes to songs. He certainly has some crap (anyone recording in the 70s and 80s did), if only b/c of production and instrumentation. But his songs, when he hits them, are amazing. Last night, Levon, Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Candle in the Wind, Rocket Man, and Saturday Night were all amazing performances. But, when it comes to entertaining, Billy Joel is simply much better than Elton John. Billy Joel looks like he's having a lot more fun, his songs are much less serious, he talks to the crowd and interacts with them and generally seems like a guy you'd like to have a beer with. I wonder how much we lose of Elton John's performance and persona living in 2009, where the fact that he's gay is no big deal. In his flaming gay period, everything he did was countercultural and subversive, and it was over the top. Now, he doesn't have to be flamboyant or over the top b/c no one cares that he's gay - I wonder how much that impacts his stage performance. They both still have amazing voice, though John's voice has dropped at least an octave, while, interestingly, Joel's has not. Joel's voice sounded just like it did on his original albums. While I think John's song catalogue vastly outperforms Joel's, they closed with just the two of them doing "Pianoman" and it was absolutely perfect. There's simply no better way they could have ended that show.

At the end of the night, the only thing that bugged me was the crowd. I saw entirely too many collared shirts for a rock concert, too many people sitting down, too many people old enough to be my grandparents. the stadium, other than the seats on the floor, felt more like a show at the pops, with polite applause at the end of each song, as opposed to an experience that the crowd participates in with the band. It's probably more an issue of me not liking the fact that I fit in better at a Billy Joel/Elton John concert than I do at whoever the newest punk or metal band is, but whatever. I will not go gracefully into THAT dark night. I will say, if you wanted to find a chick aged 30-50 last night, this was the epicenter of that in Cincinnati. I don't know if most guys decided to ditch b/c it's Billy Joel and Elton John and so it ended up being a girls night out, or if all of Cincy's lesbians came out together for this show, but man there were a lot of women there, with no guys, and they love them some "Only the Good Die Young."

Oh, and one final thing. I need drunken redneck to maintain their stereotypical views on things for my world to make sense. Last night the 3 women behind couldn't believe people were sitting. "Come on," (said in best Skynyrd concert voice) "it's fucking Elton John! How can you all be sittin down?!?!?" Look, if you're a redneck, I expect you to be an intolerant biggot, esp towards gays. Quit busting up my stereotypes

Nothing at all

2009-02-21T15:26:00.000-08:00

I'm never quite sure what to do with a day off.

Kim went to AMC to see all the movies which are nominated for best picture. I was going to go with her, but a former student of mine's father died last week and so today I got to do my first funeral. It was quite an experience. Funerals are surreal and sublime moments, and something I was honored to be asked to do and at the same time painfully aware of how inadequate I - or anyone else - is to try and offer words for something like a really unexpected death.

So, I get home, and I don't have anything to do for close to 12 hours. I started watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it's amazing how quickly an amazing movie can make time go by. But, as Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas chase Merry and Pippin across the plains of Rohan, it's an odd thing for me to have this much time off. I'm thankful for the ways that I'm sometimes forced into inactivity, and as I lay here, I realize that I do have to be forced to take time off. here's hoping that I get enough rest today to last me the 6 weeks until i get another day off :D

Forever and a Day

2009-02-13T07:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't written in forever. I got some wierd super strain of strep throat last week and damn near died. I mean, probably not, but i felt like hell. 36 hours of antibiotics cleared it right up. which is odd. if i'd have just gone to the doctor...nevermind.

in the meantime, my dog broke my new laptop, so it's at the shop. I have this fear that it'll never be quite the same again. we almost ate dog for dinner that night.

Last night, I went to see the Derek Trucks band at Bogart's with my friend Jeff. Trucks has been a guitar prodigy, well known since he was like 9 year old. He does a mix of Allman brothers style jazz/blues/roots/whatever, and he's bad-assed at it. I mean, really good. And his band was really good, incredible musicianship.

But we left an hour early.

It wasn't that it was bad. it was just background music. First, Trucks doesn't sing. he has a guy who sits to the side and sings in the rare minute between guitar/organ/bass/flute/percussion solos. And i've never liked a. token singers or b. singers who don't do anything. Trucks would be just fine as an instrumental band, or he should learn to sing. But they all sort of stood and stage and had no interaction with the crowd. We were in the upper deck at Bogart's, and at times, it was hard to hear the band over the crowd - someone easily could have been just playing a CD that I'd paid $30 to listen to and drink crappy beer. It made me sad - I LOVE the Allman Brothers. Love them. I love 30 minute long versions of their songs with wandering and aimless guitar solos. i love the fact that they are higher than high. But I'm beginning to think that all of the bands that are sort of associated or spun off of the Allman Brothers are just pale imitations. With the exception of Gov't Mule who kick so much ass its scary, anything else is just sort of sad. The Allman Brothers were this special collection of people and talent and time and place and culture and it can only work there. and it was GREAT for what it was, so much so that its still inspiring today. But it's a one time deal in a one time place.

Justin and I were talking about that, and I think alot of life is like that. With our church plant, it is what it is. we couldnt' write a book or coach someone else - it's specific to this time and this place and these people. and we live in a culture which thinks you can take "best practices" and simply replicate success anywhere at anytime by just copying what someone else did well. And it's just nonsense, and it may in fact be killing this culture, because it's stripping it of any sort of innovation or artistry, and we really, really need that.

Speaking of, you should come see my band play at the southgate house tonight. hahah. i totally just used my deep thoughts on life to whore my band out. and you read it! sucker!

Weather

2009-01-29T09:03:00.001-08:00

i'm gonna say it. i love this weather. i wouldn't want it full time, but I love this weather. a winter without snow is a dreary thing - sort of like a winter without Christmas. What would have just been a dreary January week was turned into something to anticipate, something which disrupted my normal routine and gave me a day off with my wife and son and a chance to go outside and have a shared experience (shoveling an inch of ice) with my neighbors. I love it.

My friend Patrick lives in San Diego and it's 72 and sunny there all the time. which, i'm sure is nice, he seems to love San Diego. And he can have it. I got to take Leo sledding for the first time with Justin, Cristin, Foster and Grayden, and we got to talk to people in Oakley we didn't know before. Snow does something to create community - i see people stopping to help people who are stuck, people going out of their way to shovel their neighbor's walk, it's like all the forced slow down from people's busy lives forces them to actually be human again, to remember the people in their immediate proximity and have some real downtime. In 2004 when we got the massive snowfall and paralyzed the city, I loved it, and I love it now. And come July, I'll love the 105 degree weather and a chance to be out on the boat.

so to all you scrooges out there who hate this, buck up! go out and play in the snow. In the meantime, watch Zach, Kandy and I fail at winter sports:

Awesome

2009-01-23T09:28:00.000-08:00

You may remember how proud I was of myself this past August, as in my time between employment, I engaged in a massive bathroom remodeling project. And for the past 4 mos, the bathroom has worked admirably.

But then we get this great January weather, and voila:

what's that you ask? why, it's a hole in the wall i just created! thanks to our subzero temps and some jackass construction techniques by whoever installed that bathroom, the pipes that lead to it actually run outside, so they broke this week! And what's even BETTER is that they DIDN'T break behind that wall! meaning, there was no need to tear it out, which of course we didn't find out until after we'd done that.

so now, i have to rebuild that wall, and find a way to heat an area that is basically an open wound in the side of my house. love, love, love homeownership.

Study

2009-01-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

So, as of yesterday, I'm now a full time graduate student. 12 graduate hours at Cincinnati Christian University, who apparently had no problem admitting me to their school despite my well known love of Guinness. This semester, I'm taking "Foundations of Biblical Exegesis" (how to study the bible), "New Testament Criticisms" (what are the issues around authorship, contradictions, etc), Old Testament Foundations (a survey of the OT) and "the History of the Restoration Movement". The more I get into it, the more I'm excited about it, though I'm learning that 12 hours undergrad may be significantly less work than 12 hours of grad work. Hopefully in 2 years (which is pretty ambitious), I'll have a Master's Degree in Biblical Studies.

It's a wierd thing - it officially removes me from ever going back down the teaching path. While I never intended to go back to teaching, it was always sort of a safety net that I could fall back on if I needed to. By choosing to invest a significant amount of time and money in this direction, I'm committing myself down a very specific path. That's a tad frightening, but not really. I'm excited to be learning, and learning about stuff I really care about.

What the Hell

2009-01-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

So, thanks to your all knowing, all wise federal government, in February, it will be Illegal to buy and sell used Children's toys and clothing, unless they've been certified lead free. The machine to make such a certification goes for about 35k, which means a lot of places that sell used children's stuff are going to go out of business - as well as impact charities like goodwill and Salvation Army.

So, a part of me is hacked off because children's stuff is ridiculously over priced anyway, and (esp clothes) are being outgrown every month, so buying new clothes is crazy. But what really hacks me off is the ridiculous expansion of government authority. This is not the job of government. I don't want my tax dollars going to this, i don't want any bureaucrat anywhere having this level of authority. And the worst part is that Americans freaking ask for it. over and over again, they ask for it.

enjoy your new world order. i'm moving to the mountains

Aught Ate

2009-01-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

I feel obligated to write something here - something profound about last year and all the things I learned and all the good people in my life and how much something here or something there.

And, all of those things could happen. in 2008, i left a job I was pretty good at in which people liked me, for a job that is completely undefined and a bit nerve-wracking at times - and it's the best job I've ever had. In 2008, I think I stepped into a new role as a father as Leo moved from being a crying lump that we carried around to being a real person. In 2008 there were times I got so wrapped up in myself that I sort of shut the rest of the world away, and in 2008 there were times when I tried to give myself away at such a level that I was exhausted almost to the point of delirium. In 2008 I ran 350 miles, and still managed to not lose any weight :D. I sold 2 cars, paid off a third and refinished a bathroom. I have a whole host of new friends, and have lost contact with some people who I thought would be a part of my life forever. It was a busy year.

And so 2009 started a lot like 2008 ended. Kim and I hung out today, and then went and hung out with Jared and Kim. I actually am hoping for a more laid back 09, but I've been hoping for a more laid back time for, well, a long time. One thing I've seen time and time again is that a lot of things are going to happen, and I'm going to be ready for them, or they're going to kill me.

as for resolutions, my main resolution is to offset everyone else's. I'll drink more, eat more red meat, procrastinate more, and try and accomplish less. you know, balance to the force, and all that jazz.

I hope

2008-12-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

So Justin sent me this video yesterday, and I've been kind of obsessed with it. Ever since we started on this church planting path (and you should got check out the Legend blogs - Justin did some amazing video work last week that's up there), I've been thinking a lot about Christianity and what it means and how our culture perceives both Jesus and the Church and the Church's message and how its perceived. And in the best possible way that this can be true, I find myself paralyzed at times by the message of gospel, not because I'm ashamed of it, but because I'm afraid that if I am a bad witness to it, that I'm just going to add to the general distaste that I feel a lot of people have towards the church anyway. I have enough guilt - well-deserved - in my life without adding to it.

So anyway, this video highlights just how important a graceful and sincere person can be. The person in the video is Penn from Penn and Teller. He's not shy about his thoughts on religion (see The bible is bullshit as exhibit A), which actually makes the following video all the more meaningful, I think. I'll let it speak the rest of it for itself, but it's really wrapping its hands around the way I think. I hope this is how people think about me, especially as it relates to my faith.

Surreal

2008-12-14T22:04:00.000-08:00

So tonight was an odd night.

Kim and I went to see Grace Potter and the Nocturnals at the 20th C. Theatre in Oakley. First, that Kim went out on a work night is odd. She gets up at the ass-crack of dawn. So that was wierd. The concert was outstanding - i think Potter and her band are fantastic and i really enjoy their music.

So anyway, Kim goes home, and I make my way over to Habit's for my usual Sunday night open-mic night gig. RIght away, it was an odd night. None of the people who told me they were coming showed up, so I ended up by myself most of the night. Well, I did my songs, and then Grace Potter and her whole band walk into the bar. They don't play at all, but them being there changed the vibe in the room. Anyway, since I'm good friends with the guys who host open mic night, i got to meet the band and hang out with them (had a long talk with their guitarists about the nuanced difference between a fender and a gibson through a vintage fender amp), which was super cool.

So, after being starstruck for awhile, i make my way over to the bar where for a half an hour, i'm the center of attention. That's a little odd for me, and a lot odd for Sunday nights, but i got to meet a lot of people who live in Oakley and that's why I go to Habit's, so all good. Well, this hispanic guy beckons me over to his seat, and offers to buy me a beer (which, consequently turns into 3), and it turns out that this guys is Daniel Herrera, though it's hard to check on that guy's story b/c a pic of the pitcher doesn't exist. Anyway, we had a good talk about the reds and why they suck and had alot of fun. He really liked my version of 'Folsom Prison Blues' so I guess I'm in. Maybe he can get me a gig with Bronson Arroyo's Band.

And, to wrap it up, one of the bartenders there is apparently a lesbian, and was making out with her girlfriend right next to me at the bar as i talked minor league baseball, while Grace Potter's band smoked weed at the table behind me.

See what i mean? Surreal

No News

2008-12-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

means that I've been crazy busy. Rodney, fairly so, chastised me for my lack of updates. There's a lot been going on and when i get some time to debrief, I'll write here. I imagine.

So, in the meantime, here's my son turning into the antisocial freak that the rest of the world calls a "drummer."

Chinese Democracy

2008-11-24T04:58:00.001-08:00

It's 2008. That means the last time Guns N' Roses put out a real album (the spaghetti incident, Gn'R Live and Greatest Hits albums don't count) I was in 1991. I was in the 8th grade - my mom bought me Use Your Illusion I for christmas and I got a talking to because the album title had, for 1991 standards, and explicit word in the titles. And for as much as a Metallica freak as i've been for the past 15 years, that may almost entirely be because Guns N' Roses simply ceased to put out material. It's a tribute to how simply amazing they are, in that their albums, 15 years later, are still fresh and ridiculously relevant.

So, when word surfaced that Chinese Democracy was finally going to release this year (including support from Dr. Pepper), I was skeptical. I mean, i figured it would come out, but could it live up to the hype? i mean, it's 17 years of hype. This band is the closest thing my generation ever saw to a Led Zeppelin or a Queen, and could Axl - using a band in which NONE of the original Guns members were present - pull off an album that wouldn't destroy a treasured childhood memory.

And all i can say is wow.

This album is so good you need to listen to it on 7.1 surround. there are layers and layers of guitars, and symphony and heavy metal and rap. it's scary how big this album sounds. I've never heard anything like it, it's cacophonous. And Axl's voice hasn't lost a step - so much so that I wonder if he didn't lay the vocal tracks down in 1992. It sounds JUST like that. And, here's the kicker.

He doesn't need slash.

the music on this album can ONLY be described as Guns N' Roses. If you get Gn'R, this album will sound like a Guns album to you. But it's an album that couldn't have been made in 1992. That band wouldn't have allowed it, and the sounds would have been to outside of what was happening in mainstream rock music. But this album manages to pull the impossible treat in that it is unmistakingly a guns n' roses album - maybe their best musical album ever - while it is also an unmistakingly a modern rock album that would have no place in the 1990s.

I don't know what Axl's issues are. He's clearly got them - a perfectionist on the highest order who may be the most narcissitic person ever. But he's brilliant. the lyrics are amazing, the music incredible. Somehow, someway, Axl managed to live up to the hype. I never would have guessed it. But he did. This is my vote right now for album of the year.

Lust

2008-11-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that I love toys. I love wireless things, and electronic things, and tools, and boats. And it's not actually the things themselves that I love, but the experiences that I get to have through them and with other people.

But this week, I fell in love with a toy that I absolutely do not need and I simply don't care that I don't need it. The Avalon L300G is a guitar that is handcrafted in Ireland. It's a beautiful piece of art, hand crafted of Oak with an Oak leaf inlay in the headstock. There are plenty of boutique hand made guitars in America, all of which are gorgeous, but that's sort of besides the point. I like that it's made in Ireland (i'm a sucker for marketing. does that surprise you?), and I LOVE the carved wood across the soundhole. The guitar is gorgeous, and sounds amazing (I heard a recording of someone playing it, supposedly, raw, with no production).

Of course, the issue becomes paying for it. The fact that the dollar sucks against the Euro right now helps out a little bit, and since i'm buying it directly from the manufacturer, i would get a 20% discount. Even after all that, the guitar would cost me at least $3700. Now, that comes with a hardshell case (obviously, quite the deal :D), but I can't imagine being able to come up with $3700. Yesterday I sold almost every video game I own on ebay, and scored about $200. which is $3500 short of my goal. This becomes an interesting issue for me - i suck at saving money, especially long term. and to save $3500 is simply not really an option i can see me doing. i mean, hell, that's a car. given some of hte cars i've driven, it's almost 3 cars.

So, I'm now taking charitable donations. You can pay pal me directly at jwilcoxon@current.net Thank you for your support.

all figured out

2008-11-15T10:16:00.001-08:00

There are some people, and i don't know many of them, who have figured life out. And most of the time, when you meet them, they seem as if life is sort of a private joke that they get and you don't - they see things in many many more shades of grey than I do, and get it for what it is (Val Kilmer's "Doc Holiday" was like this at the very end of Tombstone). they're the kind of people who you love to be around, and in fact, you're a better person because they're around.

i hope someday to be that person. A friend of mine showed me an obituary from his town. I think this guy, is one of those guys. And I hope someday, someone writes me an obit like this. (click to enlarge)

Snapped

2008-11-13T11:17:00.000-08:00

America, i'm simply not sure i can deal with you anymore. I put up with the nonsense that happened during the election cycle. I put up with your inability to understand even the most base of economic concepts as you funnel billions of dollars into dying companies operating under dying business models. I even ignored your moronic support of a movie about talking !@#!@$ chihuahas.

But today, at my local goodwill store, I think i snapped.

i found this toy in the buyout section. and I'm actually so astounded at it that I don't quite know how to vent my anger. Do I freak out at the fact that the one that millions and millions of americans claim as their savior and God has been made into a toy? A toy with glow-in-the-dark hands? A toy that claims to change water into wine (wth??!?!!?!?!)? If this kind of nonsense happened in Muslim countries, there'd be riots. And I'm certainly not calling for that, but is there anything reverent? Is anything beyond our cheap made-in-taiwan manufacturing?

or do I freak out that the toy was given away, that someone bought it and didn't want it?

or do I freak out that I wasn't willing to buy it.

I don't know. America you are causing my cognitive features to freeze up and to be unable to process your ridiculousness. knock it off.

Some Old Friends

2008-11-05T19:58:00.001-08:00

Lens Lounge got together to practice last night for the first time in forever - our last time together was in April, as Jeff Spent the summer promoting his latest solo album and I left a job, started a new job, etc etc. To be completely honest, I didn't want to go to practice. We're practicing out in Colerain now (which, when compared to our previous practice space in Norwood makes it feel like i should book a flight) and for some reason i've just been really tired and didn't feel like investing in it.

I'm really glad I did - first, I'd forgotten how much I like Lens Lounge songs. I know they're not for everybody - if you're going out to a bar looking for poppy dance music, this isn't your scene. But I'm not - I love alt country and as were were going through these songs, I was reminded of how much I appreciate the style, and that Jeff does this style better than alot of people doing it. Jeff also lets me be me - he's not dictating really specific parts for me to play, he's letting me play, offering suggestions where they're helpful and then letting the music fall where it may. And, I think it falls out well. I like these songs, and over the past 6 months, I had forgotten that I liked them, and how comfortable I am as a bassist (which is odd, because i've always been a guitarist).

And, apparently, we're adding a pedal steel player - which is a remarkably unique sound that adds so much that I was blown away, and we're going to do a recording, which is really exciting - Lens Lounge has quite the history, and I'm excited to be a recorded part of that.

All in all, it was a really good night. I forget how much I like music, and for the past two months, my entire life has been wrapped up in a job that I really like - but it's still unhealthy, I think, to be that occupied by work. To have an outlet that isn't work is good for everyone, and I'd forgotten that. And, i normally get free beer as part of the gig. You can't beat that.

Things People Need to not say

2008-11-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

So, let's say you're a conservative who is really dejected about last night's defeat. Or, even more so, let's say that you're a conservative Christian who is real riled up about last night's debate. That's actually ok - I think there are some real legitimate differences one can have with the president-elect and his policies and his philosophies on government. But in my continuing effort to really help people, I was thinking about things that both Conservatives and Conservative Christians should not say:

Obama is not a socialist. He is not for the government control of the means of production, and as such cannot be a socialist. He is no more for the redistribution of wealth than McCain is, Bush is, Clinton was, Bush was, Reagan Was, Carter was, Ford was, Nixon was, etc etc. For a long time this country has been redistributing wealth, the question is just a matter of at what rate and to whom. So if you supported McCain you can't really claim to be against the redistribution of wealth, just against Obama's specifics of it (which, is ok, just make sure you speak truly). And, if you're really worried about socialism, Bush's authorization of the federal government buying shares in banks should really really freak you out.
Obama is not going to begin a genocide of unborn children still in the womb. Even if you disagree with him and his stance on abortion, it's a nuanced position that has parts that you probably agree with. Stop accusing him of genocide and wanting to kill babies, because that's not what he wants.
Obama is not a terrorist and not a supporter of Islamic terrorists. They don't like him either. He's not going to hand the keys of the capital to the terrorists.
Obama is not the antiChrist. Stop it.

Those are just a few (and here's a list of things black folks shouldn't do and a list of things white folks shouldn't do) - if we're going to be opposed to Obama's rule, great. there are some real legit ways to do that and still be people who have sense and civility in discussing politics. For those conservatives - and, even worse conservative Christians - who are losing it over Obama getting elected, calm down and take a breath. We didn't elect a king, we elected a president.

Uh Oh

2008-11-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

if Obama is the anti Christ* and he's just been elected president, does that mean the thousand year reign of terror is about to begin?

Justin and I were having a conversation tonight - what do you do if you've become a part of the machine (and the machine exists on both sides) and you lose? Groups like Focus on the Family said some crazy things as part of their schilling for the republican party and now their boy lost? how do you have any credibility now? People last night, as McCain was giving his concession speech were booing - how do people who are that into "their" side and that into winning, how do they function today? It's not that I didn't have an opinion on the issue, because I did. those of you who know me know i have lots of opinions. But regardless of whether my opinions won or lost today, I can't imagine getting up tomorrow and having to deal with the end of the world - which is how so many people on both sides acted. I'm glad alot of the nonsense is over, and we can get onto bigger and better things.

i just hope Jon Stewart is still funny.

*for the record, the author of this blog in no way feels that Obama is the antichrist and is in fact making fun of the absurd mental gymnastics one must do to come to that conclusion

Only One More Day

2008-10-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

Till no-shave-November. Which very well may last until February.

Any Given Sunday

2008-10-26T14:10:00.001-07:00

Within the last month, I think I've developed a sunday routine that will probably last me a long time. It involves not sleeping well on saturday night, getting up at the butt-crack of dawn on sunday, carpooling my friends, and being part of a team that transitions an odd community center into a really cool sanctuary, and then either leading worship or preaching (some weeks both), tearing down the community center in about 1/4 the time it took to put us together, then lunch with some good friends and home to be irritated and disappointed by the bengals. I have a fantastic wife who takes care of our son which normally allows me to catch a nap on sunday afternoons as well.

It's an exhausting schedule. Not in a bad way, but in the way that anytime you pour everything you are into an endeavor, you're exhausted. There's something that's really good about being tired from a hard day's work, though it does tend to hang on till at least monday afternoons.

I was thinking, today, though how much i really enjoy our church community. there's a ridiculous variety of people there, but they all genuinely feel like they're friends and they like each other. When i look back at all the things that make all the work required to build a church "worth it" - the community that's being built will always be one of the driving forces for me. something good is starting here, and it's encouraging to see it coming alive

Classy

2008-10-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Jared and I went to the Bengals - Steelers game this past sunday. I don't know why i go to Bengals games, and don't know why i let stupid fitzpatrick get my hope up in the 3rd quarter, you'd think I'd be completely numb by now.

So, anyway, steelers games are a little intense downtown - it's just flat out embarassing the number of steelers fans in this city, and the fact that they're selling pittsburgh merch ON the plaza level of the stadium. i don't know that that would happen anywhere else in the NFL - this is a city with no pride any more.

Anyway, i've had this sort of working theory for the past 7 years (as long as i've been going to NFL games) that steelers fans, and esp steelers fans that go to bengals games, are a simply classless group of people. for all the jokes steelers fans like to make about the "thuggery" of bengals fans, the behavior of steelers fans (and, seriously, you beat the 0-6 bengals. way to go) leaves one scratching their head. So when I read this story about a fan getting assaulted at the game, i knew before hand, which team the assaulter was rooting for and which team the assaultee was rooting for.

classy. at least the steelers fans are staying true to form.

The Problem of Pain

2008-10-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

So this week, I'm preaching at Legend on Revelation 2:8-11, and it's one of the more interesting letters to the churches in Asia. A lot of the letters have corrective measure for the churches - something they're doing wrong, that needs fixed or X, Y, or Z will happen. Given the issues that we all see within the church, it's fairly easy to relate to churches that have issues that need fixed.

But not Smyrna. There is no corrective measure offered to them. But there is encouragement issued to them, because apparently they're suffering and about to suffer an intense persecution. In the other churches, there's an idea that they're doing something wrong and they will be punished for it, but for this church, they're not referenced as doing anything wrong, yet they're undergoing an intense persecution. So somehow, i have to, in about a half an hour, make sense of suffering in the world.

So, I've been spending alot of time in C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain this week, which is a thick little book that both explains suffering at a philosophical level and how nature forces us into the problem of suffering and how God can still be good in spite of what we'd call senseless suffering. it's a great book, but thick and not the kind of thing you read, but rather what you study. I'd forgotten how much I like Lewis, and how challenging he is.

But, what's ultimately struck me is that at the end of the day, tension is a central part of Christianity, and (this is the part that's hit me the hardest) when I find myself identifying with the systems of power and the systems of authority, i find myself moving away from identifying with Jesus. A fundamental disconnect I'm having with the Church in America as compared to the Church in Smyrna is that we need fear no persecution. We ARE the power structure now - we're in bed with political parties (both of them, though they're both the same, interested only in maintaining the status quo), and the "evangelical" or "conservative christian" or "moral majority" (blah blah blah) vote is regularly talked about as a voting bloc. And I'm trying to wrap my head around what this means. What does it look like for the Church to stand opposed to the political systems? To stand in the prophetic role that the Church had for a long time (esp. pre-Constantine). Maybe even more importantly, what does that look like for me as an individual, for someone who lives in a house, and has a loan through the banks, and pays into the system of government, funding both welfare and war (both of which could be labeled as destructive to people's lives).

I'm not sure i have the answers to those questions. I'm glad it's not my job to have all the answers

As Promised

2008-10-19T13:43:00.001-07:00

Pictures from yesterday's festivities (there's a lot of them!)

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Glorious Days

2008-10-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

Today is the annual Highland Games at my friend KT's house on the Western side of Cincinnati (if you're on I74 today, near the montana exit, look to the east and you should be able to see us. trust me, we'll stand out). It's one of my favorite landmarks of a given year (strangely enough, the other two involve KT as well - both Christmas Caroling and St. Patrick's Day also involve KT). Not only is today a day of great food and friends and fun and beer and whiskey (good beer and good whiskey!), it's also a chance for me to wear my kilt - which only happens 2-3 times a year. This year, I purchased a new blackwatch (some interesting history there!) kilt from Celtic Isles in Dayton, and 5 of my really good friends are going to be joining me. Even Leo has a matching kilt today, so it's rounding out to be a stellar day!

There's something very cool about days like this - the games, the kilts, all of that is fantastically fun, but it's all just an excuse to get together with some really fantastic people, and have some great shared experiences. It's one of those days that I couldn't really explain, b/c the words will never do it justice. I'll get some pictures (and if everything goes well, a video!) up in the next couple of days, but just so you don't think i'm making this stuff, here's some great pictures from years past.

May the blessing of light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire, so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it. And may light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in the window of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm. And may the blessing of the rain be on you, may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean, and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines, and sometimes a star. And may the blessing of the earth be on you, soft under your feet as you pass along the roads, soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day; and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it. May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God. And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly. Amen.

Cincinnati Entertainment Awards

2008-10-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

I don't normally spam like this, but the lead singer for the band I'm in has been nominated for some awards from City Beat's Cincinnati Entertainment Awards - if you could take a second and vote for him, he'd appreciate it, and his new album is really, really fantastic. Here's the email Jeff sent out:

Dear Bandmates, Friends, Neighbors, Fans, Passing Acquaintances and, quite possibly, Total Strangers,

Apologies for the one time spam.

Maybe we know each other from the Cincinnati Waldorf School or Colerain Obama Campaign or banging around the local music scene or somewhere else. Most of you know I'm a musician, band leader and songwriter with a 20 year history of knocking around Cincinnati and the midwest/east coast. Some just know me as Miranda and Celeste's dad, others that tired looking guy who always looks like he just rolled out of bed.

This year I've been favored with two CEA nominations - in the Folk/Americana category and in Album of the Year. Album of the Year is decided by local music critics and movers and shakers, but the Folk/Americana nomination is an 'anyone can vote contest' . I'm not much at asking people to do things special for me, but once in a blue moon this happens. I had a really great record out this year - 'Summer's Here' - that has received a good amount of critical praise and having this recognition may help me to push it to another level - people who don't know you love to see that other people like you, it gives them cause for pause.

Vote here:
CEA Ballot

You can hear some of the record at www.myspace.com/jeffscottroberson and read about the making of it in the blog located at the same site - language sensitivities apply! It was a great time making this record, I had an opportunity to work with some of the greatest musicians to come out of Motown, Memphis, Nashville and Los Angles in the last 40 years and, with my producer Ed Pettersen guiding the creative process and the legendary Bob Ohlsson of Motown overseeing the technical process, we made a fantastic record that a lot more people should hear.

Please don't hesitate to forward this on to friends, acquaintances and strangers.

Jeff Scott Robertson

Oh for the love of ...

2008-10-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

so why do we need another church?

because there are still churches out there that are teaching things and allowing their followers to believe crazy things like this. in Ohio.

Lord, Have mercy on us.

Best Man Fail

2008-10-13T07:29:00.001-07:00

Something new

2008-10-06T08:37:00.001-07:00

So Legend community church started yesterday. Those of you who subscribe to our podcast, a new one will be up later this afternoon or tomorrow (itunes has been goofy lately, if you get it from anywhere but itunes it'll be up within the hour). It's become cliche in the last week, but we spent a year planning for yesterday and have a week to plan for next sunday.

And all in all, yesterday went way better than I think Justin or I ever would have dreamt. That's in large part due to some amazing people - Jared, Casey, Joel, the worship team, Katie, ok, really, it's going to be way to long a list - who showed up and did an amazing job, being flexible and easy to work with and falling in wherever we needed someone to pick us up. We had a LOT more people show up than we expected, and everything flowed really, really well. Perhaps the biggest hole yesterday was that we had a lot more kids show up than we expected, which is a great problem to have. Unless you're one of the 4 (increased to like 7 as the service went on) people working with kids, and the Pastor's son decides to melt down on you. Other than that, in every way imaginable, yesterday went off better than we'd ever imagined. I was telling Cristin last night that I almost felt guilty about how well things worked - it seemed too easy.

And as Justin has said elsewhere, the hard work begins now. Yesterday, we did a great job of having a church service. It wasn't terribly flashy, wasn't technically impressive (and even that, i managed to screw up haha), but it was a solid church sejavascript:void(0)rvice. But afterwards, I think maybe some of the most important stuff we do happened. We went to Lauren's house for an old fashioned church lunch on a sunday afternoon, and we just sat and hung out. And then last night, about 10 of us went to the Comet to celebrate Jeff's birthday. what happened yesterday after church (and has been happening for 6 mos) is that a group of people lived life together with a common bond that transcends the bonds that we're told are so important. Yesterday, people of all races and financial backgrounds and experiences came together in one community, under the banner of loving God and loving other people.

As we were leaving the community center yesterday, I was talking to Meredith, and I said, hey, see you next sunday morning, at 8 am. And every Sunday morning afterwards. For who knows how long. And that's the important part of what we're doing - not can we build a great show once, or even a couple of times. But can we put together a movement that joins with a much larger movement. And as long as we're doing the after-church-service-stuff - living and eating and drinking and celebrating and when appropriate mourning or being quiet or whatever the situation calls for - then I think we've joined into something very important here. And it's exciting to be a part of.

18 Hours and 11 minutes

2008-10-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

and Legend Community Church opens its doors for the first time.

our big blue truck is packed.
sermons have been written
rent has been paid
City Q has been booked

we're gonna have some church!

awesome

2008-10-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

kids characters cussing and being all surly crack me up. awesomeness

more lol celebs!

Podcasting

2008-09-30T07:37:00.001-07:00

So, you may be thinking to yourself, what could be better than reading Jason's well articulated rants on politics and music and religion, et al? Well, faithful readers, I have quite the answer for you! As Legend prepares to launch, one of the things I've been preparing is an ability to Podcast various things. So in addition to reading my well thought out and constructed diatribes here, you now have the blessing of listening to me get on my moral high horse and preach.

Obviously, i'm just kidding, as those of you who know me know that a moral high horse is the last place you're ever going to find me. That aside, you can now get the sermons each week from Legend, as well as Justin and/or I's thoughts on life the Universe and everything. Within the next couple of days, you should be able to search "Legend Church" in the iTunes store, and our podcast should come up. if you hit "subscribe" then itunes will automatically download any updates we put up. Currently, there are some problems with itunes and automatic updates, and since we're brand new, i think we're a little lost in the shuffle. if you open itunes, and then click Advanced>subscribe to podcast and then enter http://legendchurch.podbean.com/feed in the diaglouge box, it should take you directly there and you can subscribe. You can also just go to our podbean site and listen, download or subscribe there (if you use another podcast manager)

or, you can click play below. i think you can d/l directly from there as well. hope you enjoy!

Civil Disobedience?

2008-09-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

So, today is my final sunday without work for, perhaps, the rest of my life. Given my constantly changing vocational status, declaring any path of mine permenant is probably odd, but it is what it is. I've enjoyed the last 10 weeks off, and next sunday marks the first day of Legend Community Church. I'm really excited and think that some huge things are going to get started.

Today I'm watching cnn.com and this story (video below) catches my eye. It's about pastors who are going to violate the IRS code and endorse a particular candidate for president. Now, i'm sort of torn on the issue. as a political science major and a history guy, i think it's absurd that the IRS would tell churches what is ok and not ok to talk about. The church, as its serving its prophetic role in the community, esp that of speaking truth to power - should be completely hands off from the government in terms of what they can or cannot say. But the problem here isn't the government - its the churches. the government struck a deal with the churches saying they'd give them tax exempt status if they didn't talk about A, B or C, and in doing so, the Church in many ways neutered itself of a significant part of its role in the community. So from a free speech end, i have a problem with this whole deal.

But these pastors in these churches, who are flagrantly violating the law, are another problem unto themselves. if you don't like the IRS boundaries, you can always reject your non profit status and then say whatever you want. they're trying to have their cake and eat it to. And I think I'd sort of be with them, if they weren't so freaking predictable. it's not like there are pastors on both sides of hte aisle doing this. it's the same brand of tired old "Christian Right" politics that has made "Christian" and "Republican" synonomous in the culture. I'm so tired of people thinking they understand everything the need to know about me simply b/c I identify myself as a christian. And these guys feed into this stereotype. and the worst part is, i'm sure they're sincere, and really nice guys. they're just sincere and really nice guys who are doing a significant amount of damage to the Church.

I've said recently that the best thing that Bush has done is to teach, esp Christians, that it will never be through the arm of government that real change is impacted upon the earth. Revival or renewal or redemption will never occur b/c the gov't is somehow reflective of "Christian Values" (whatever that means). Apparently, though, that lesson is slow to take...

Damn it

2008-09-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

!@#$!@#$%^@$#%^$$#%&^#%$^&$$%@^@#!$%@#$!!%#$^#$!^%@#$E@!#$##@!

New Smokes

2008-09-24T17:25:00.000-07:00

Fall and winter are the seasons for smoking. That was definitely true before the fascists in "No-hio" voted to take away smoking at bars. Trust me, if you support the smoking ban, you're a fascist. i could go into the entire political philosophy behind it, but I won't, because this isn't that kind of blog. BUT BELIEVE YOU ME I COULD. Anyway, the No-hio fascists have ruined smoking indoors (unless I happen to be over in the commonwealth, but the fascists will win there too, eventually), so that really leaves me with smoking in the fall.

you see, in the fall, it's still comfortable enough to be outside, but also to have a fire. having a fire in the summer, while I do it all the time, is stupid, b/c around here it's still 900 degrees at night. but not in that glorious season known as fall. A nice beer - or a spiked cider - and a good smoke and I'm pretty much set for a fall night. if some good friends happen to be there to enjoy it with me, so much the better.

so, I decided to celebrate both the changing of the seasons and some found money from June, I bought myself a new Peterson Pipe/Zippo Set. I'm so excited. I have a love affair with Peterson Pipes, and the collectible zippo part is just icing on the cake. Noone quite makes a pipe like Peterson (though, Meerschaums have their own very particular and cool style), and so I'm excited to spend some time in October breaking in my new pipe.

so, if you get some time, come on over. we'll smoke and sit and drink and talk. And life will be very good.

I dunno

2008-09-24T09:14:00.001-07:00

if this is real or not, but it's funny. and it could be real.

Church Wars - The battle between the Catholics and the Presbyterians has reached a whole new level. (from CollegeHumor)

Ah, Cincinnati

2008-09-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

So, the crazy weather of the last couple of days has sort of forced a new perspective onto people - but that's another blog (perhaps tomorrow). The Enquirer, Cincinnati's bastion for insightful writing and cutting social commentary, ran an article last friday (and the cover story on sunday's rag) that simply couldn't be ignored.

Low-income rents, uneven demands highlights people who are using the Section 8 housing program to move out of traditionally poor neighborhoods into typically "hard working" and "blue collar" neighborhoods. And I'm not going to write some lengthy blog pretending as if section 8 housing doesn't bring issues with it. Poverty and homelessness are complicated issues that deserve well thought out and comprehensive responses. Both of our political parties are abject failures at dealing with poverty issues, and the Church has been even worse (mostly because of its constant affiliation with those failed political parties).

But the tone of the article drove me through the damn roof. there was no nuanced discussion of poverty and its causes or the ramifications of gentrification of older city neighborhoods. Instead, it was an article treating "thousands of poor people" (the first 4 words of the article) as if they're some massive zombie movement out of "Dawn of the Dead," moving forward to steal rich people's property values. It's simply another example of how the polarization of our politics - acting as if there are only 2 options - is killing any sort of movement forward on anything. The Enquirer - representing and catering to the "if people simply worked harder there woulnd't be any poverty" NONSENSE - is in capable of thinking through this. And in it, individuals become the enemy, instead of us dealing with the issues:

Most Section 8 recipients decline to talk on the record, saying they fear a backlash from their neighbors. Some say their friends and neighbors don’t know they’re on Section 8. One says she lied to neighbors about owning her home.

The fear backlash from their neighbors. That's where we've become. I'm actually a fairly conservative guy and think the gov't has a pretty minimal role in, well, everything. But if neighbors would help to look out for people, and work on taking care of their neighbors, then the gov't wouldn't have to step in, and alot of these problems would fix themselves.

we can have disagreements over solutions to poverty. we really can - i get where democrats come from in some of their solutions to poverty, even if I (as a conservative) disagree with them). But we're goign to have to STOP treating people like they're lepers, and actually start giving a damn about what's happening in people's lives.

Metallica: Death Magnetic

2008-09-03T08:48:00.001-07:00

It's been a long, long time since I've been able to have faith in and be excited about Metallica. in 96, I tried with Load. It was different, but i liked southern rock alot and it had that kind of feel, so i defended it. Then reload came out in 97, and i still tried really hard to defend it (my sophomore year roommate at Miami and I got into massive fights over whether or not Metallica was still a heavy metal band). 1998 produced Garage, Inc a cover album that was fun, but still not Metallica in all their glory. Then S&M came out, and finally St. Anger. And St. Anger was so bad that I almost was done with them. It's still on my ipod, but i listened to it once, and it's just awful. It hurts me deeply to say that.

So, when the hype for Death Magnetic started, I was skeptical. But no more. 5 stars. hell, 10 stars - this album is that good. Mission:Metallica began releasing songs to those of us dumb enough to drop money for access to behind the scenes stuff, and at first, I thought, eh, this isn't bad. It's not "Damage, Inc" (my fav metallica song), but it's 100x better than St. Anger. Then the second single - My Apocalypse dropped, and my jaw dropped with it. It's ferocious - like something held over from Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets. It actually reminds me of "Rise" by Pantera, and it's been a long time since Metallica sounded like this.

Then yesterday, some jackass in France (stupid french) leaked Death Magnetic and I spent all night listening to it (you can listen on youtube). and, simply put, Metallica is back. Metallica in all their glory as a heavy metal band - with huge guitar solos, incredibly complex rhythm structures, 8 minute songs, and make-your-heart-explode-speed - is back. And I love it. This is seriously their best album since the Black album, and it may be better than that. Hetfield is better as a singer and songwriter since 1992 (holy crap, has it been that long?) and the band is back to actually playing like they mean it.

This may be the best album I've heard in the last 10 years, it's that good. You're going to have to like old school Metallica to like it - if "Nothing Else Matters" or "Hero of the Day" is your reference point, then you'll have to readjust you're thinking of Metallica. But it's fantastic. Someone has finally brought the Metal back, and we're all better off for it.

McCain Wins

2008-08-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

because he picked the hot chick

Church

2008-08-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

So, since July, I haven't really gone to Church. I was in Mexico a couple of weeks, went once to Crestview (to a sunday entirely too focused on me) and then went once to Kim's Parent's Church for a weekend. It's wierd for me to not do anything on Sunday Mornings, because I've worked at a church continuously for the past 7 years - so aside from the extremely rare vacation, I don't really know what Sunday mornings were like.

And with me working at a church, i feel as if i haven't really gone to church, either. With the church I worked at, I was so focused on so many other things that sunday mornings did feel, in many ways, like a work day. I was focused very much in putting on the show that people expected (whoever they were) and in that mix, the experience that I'd call "church" got lost in the mix. Part of that was my fault, part of it was the institution's fault, and at the end of the day i've come to realize that fault rarely matters for anything - rather the clean up of whatever mess was created is the important thing.

So today, we went to Northstar Vineyard in Loveland. It was the church where I'd really come to understand what it meant in real terms to be a Christian, the church where I'd found a voice and a community of good friends (alot of whom are still my good friends). It is home in a lot of ways as my faith journey goes, and it becomes the standard I compare churches by. I didn't know what it'd be like going back - they're in a new building, with a lot of new people in leadership and it's different place than it was 4 years ago. And, yet in spite of all that, I walked right back into an amazing church that experiences the grace and love and mercy of Jesus, and at the same time shoves that as hard as it can right back out the door into their community.

And the thing was, there was nothing special about it. Chad got up and lead worship with a couple of Chris Tomlin songs - nothing edgy, nothing different about them. Chad's a good singer and a good worship leader in that he leads people into the presence of God, but there was nothing magical or extraordinary about what he did. Matt lead us through the scriptures and didn't bring any sort of new teaching about the historical context or the greek language, he didn't illuminate some deep seated mystery of the scriptures. He reminded us that the call for the church was the call to love people and he confessed his own failure to do that and called the church to repent of theirs. and then they did communion - simply, with families leading each other, husbands praying for wives and children. there was no glitz, no fancy light show, no drama, no amazing personality that commanded attention (though, Matt can be that if he wants to be). It was just, simply, church.

And in recognizing that, I think i recognized my biggest failure at Crestview. They were always and forever trying to come up with some program, some thing they could do that would attract people, and I could never convince them that that was wrong. Some new program, some new "thing." alot of that hinged on "worship styles" (which is an ABSURD term) and keeping the people that were already there happy. and today, what I realized, was that that will never work. at Northstar, there's a church of people who genuinely love Jesus, and because of that genuinely love each other and their community, and people want to come to that. there's no pretense, no bullcrap. just a church - and its sunday morning worship service - that reflects the hearts of the people already there.

Ultimately, and i've been taught this before, it was just good to see it displayed, the worship you have at a church is a direct reflection of the hearts of the people of that church. it stops and starts there - all of the other things, the songs, the preaching, the lighting, the greeters, all of that stuff is a distant, distant second. and until that is reached, most churches will just be banging their heads on the wall, never understanding why they completely fail to reach the people they've been tasked to serve. sometimes, my heart breaks for the church - i get why people, especially in America, want nothing to do with the church. But then, i go to places like Northstar, and part of me is relieved, to be reminded that there are good places, lead by good people, doing good things out there. God grant us more of them.

Inked Up

2008-08-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

When I got my first tattoo, I had heard all the ridiculous nonsense that tattoos were addictive. i mean, really, it's a fairly painful process by which someone injects ink into your skin, permanantly disfiguring you. but, 5 years, 3 tattoos later, I really am addicted to them. Now, i don't go as far as others because, well, i simply can't afford them. But it's something I could see myself doing for a significant part of the rest of my life.

This is my Leo tattoo, obviously a lion for my son (special thanks to Casey Ryan for the design). I'd started planning it while he was still in the hospital but time has a funny way of moving really fast, and to save up the $200 for me is a serious discipline. Finally, I had enough and went to Designs by Dana in Northside on Friday and had them ink me up. Jared and I were talking about how much fun it'd be to work in that environment - the guys are artists through and through and they get to completely be themselves (no b.s. pretense of professionalism in the fake corporate sense of the word). It was a fantastic experience - so I think I've found a new tattoo shop. Which is good, because Roy in mason was kind of a jerk and the guy in norwood (I feel bad not knowing his name) apparently died recently.

Now, we have to find a way to talk Kim into a tattoo. I have some ideas for a design for her.....

Wakeboarding

2008-08-19T18:37:00.001-07:00

Much like Justin, a huge deal for me this summer has been learning to wakeboard. I love it - it's much better than skiing, and i feel like 'm getting OK at it. I spent a couple of hours on the Ohio yesterday with some good friends, and man, this is really all I need to toally relax. which kind of sucks - b/c it's not a cheap habit. i mean, you need a boat. and a truck. and gas. and those things aren't cheap. But i do love it.

I am going to have to find a way to gracefully get old though. it takes me at least a day to recover from a couple of hours of wakeboarding - i simply can't do the things I used to do. So, I'll enjoy these while I can.

One Year Later

2008-08-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Capturing a year, in about 6 minutes

Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes

2008-08-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

So, a year ago today I became a dad. I can't believe it's been a year - not that it hasn't been an amazing year, because it has. and not because I don't love my son with a sort of intensity that still catches me off guard. I just can't believe it's only been a year. I can read back on this very blog and know that part of my life pre-existed him, but I can't remember that time. Which is probably why I do things like blog, and take pictures.

So, in some physics denying part of my reality, time is speeding up exponentially. yesterday, seemingly, my son was born almost 8 weeks premature and we weren't at all sure what was going to happen. Today, he's walking. Life's pretty damn good.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Scavanging

2008-08-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

So I'm hanging out at City Q this afternoon, doing a little light reading, my mom calls me to tell me of a story she saw on the news today -
Sign Of The Times: 'For Sale' Outside Ohio Church. It presents an obviously cool opportunity for us in the church planting world to maybe score some stuff for cheap for our church plant, so I began a large trek that involved me heading into Norwood (a journey into Norwood is never undertaken lightly) to find the church, and then being redirected downtown to an auction house on West Fourth Street where I find that the belongings of the church have been snatched up already. Empty handed, I head home, pondering the fate of this church and its people.

The article on News 5 cites the declining population of Norwood post-General Motors as the easy reason for the church's dropping attendance, and then moves on. But as I got to thinking about Norwood, and Oakley and Eastern Cincinnati, something doesn't sit right with me about that. It's not like Norwood's a ghost town - Norwood has had some huge economic development in the past 10 years, and there are people everyday walking the streets, esp in the particular section of Norwood this church is in. Maybe, Norwood's population changed and the church no longer knew how to meet the needs of the community it found itself in, or maybe the church became so big (900 at one point, according to the article) that it was forced by the weight of its own infrastructure to stop caring about the community outside and instead became focused on its own members, not seeing it's own inevitable decline until it was too late. I don't know - i don't know that this church, or anyone who goes there and I'm not criticizing them at all.

But i don't buy that churches simply fade away because of economic conditions in the town they're in. There's a bigger lesson to be learned here - if churches want to survive, they're going to have to learn to adapt and to - hold on to your seats here - actually meet the needs of the community they're in. The days when the church could simply build a building and be respected by the community be default are over, and the Church had better start realizing that it is going to have to actually play the game if it wants people to come to it. it doesn't mean selling out, or weaking the message of the church to make it more palatable (quite the opposite, I think), but it does mean that the Church needs to start being proactive.

or else there'll continue to be bargain hunters like me scavanging for good deals off old churches in dusty auction houses. Today, I saw a cross that probably sat at the front of this sanctuary for years pushed into a corner b/c no one wanted to buy it. I saw the trays used to serve communion, and candle holders that had borne symbolic and literal light for two or three generations, relegated to cheap junk. Someone had better wake us up.

3 Weeks Later

2008-08-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

Now...what's next.

Stupid Stuff

2008-08-08T05:03:00.001-07:00

It's been a long week. The bathroom project just drags on and on. I finally got to a point where it's "good enough" meaning I should be able to finish it today. It's been an infuriating process, which is probably good for me, but it's been exhausting. It's been interesting watching how I work - both alone and under pressure. By yesterday, i was done and was making sloppy stupid cuts on the tile board. Home improvement is one of those things I'm OK at, but the big projects take alot of skill and equipment that I don't have. On the flip side, the wall I built and the drywall job I had to do on it turned out fantastic, so it's been a mixed bag. I was amazed at how much my ability to do a good job depends upon my attitude towards the job and how tired I am - towards the end of the job, i get tired and the quality definitely went down hill.

but, enough of that. Wednesday night, a friend of mine and I went to see the Black Crowes at the Madison Theatre in Covington. It was fanatastic, and really a good reminder of how much i love and miss concerts. The opening band - Grace Potter - was probably one of the best opening bands I've ever seen, with a classic blues/rock sound and a fantastic Hammond B3 sound (honestly, if a band doesn't have a hammond, it's missing something) and an amazing persona on stage. But the Crowes were just on another level. They may be my favorite band of all time. I love the fact that they came out, and didn't play any of their hits, any of the radio songs. I love the fact that they play 14 minute version of 6 minute songs and keep the playing interesting. I love the fact that they channel the Stones and Zeppelin and the Allman Bros better than any band in america right now. Rich Robinson has probably the second best guitar tone in the world, and the whole band creates these incredibly complex textures of sound that is all encompassing. I was talking with Meredith at the show, and one of the things we realized is that by the end of a Black Crowes show, you become completely overstimulated. The band creates this massive,layered sound that takes a lot to process through. Combine that with the light show (which was ok, but i've seen better. but the fact that it's just "ok" reinforces what a cool and raw rock show this was), and the density of the crowd, where you're constantly touching people, and finalize it with the pungent smell of weed and every sense you have is engaged and overwhelmed and at the end of it, you're just wore out, but int he best possible way you can be wore out. I love rock and roll, and the Crowes do that better than anyone doing it right now, with the possible exception of Lucero,but that's another blog.

So, come friday, i'm really tired. in both good and bad ways, i've done a lot this week, pouring who i am into alot of things, which is good for me. I did find this video online and I think it's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. you may not, but that's because you're not as sophisticated as me.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Like This

2008-08-04T06:49:00.001-07:00

Been awhile

2008-07-31T18:35:00.001-07:00

So I've had my ass kicked by home improvement stuff this week, which I hope to post pictures of shortly. But, seeing as it has kicked my ass and i'm really tired, I don't feel like writing about it.

So I thought I'd post some pics of how cute my son is. Bask in his glory!

A Weekend Off

2008-07-27T11:08:00.001-07:00

I think that this is my first sunday off in probably 3 years. there may have been one or two scattered in there, but in general, this is the first time I've seen a sunday morning in a long time. And it's a good thing - Kim has been scrapbooking all day, and I've been playing with Leo and trying to delete all the CPC stuff off my computer so it doesn't take up space. And this whole weekend has been like that - yesterday, we didn't do much of anything in the morning, and in the afternoon, we got to go hang out with our friends Dave and Emily for their daughter's 2 year birthday party, and then we went with Rodney and Casey to the Dayton Celtic Festival (which is one of my favorite festivals in this area. I think it's better than Oktoberfest - the music is certainly better.) Thursday night I went wakeboarding again, and Friday, we hung out at Justin's to celebrate his birthday.

So for 4 days now, I've done nothing of consequence. just hung out, talked with some friends, drank a little beer, smoked a little pipe. I was telling Casey last night that even at the festival, it's hard for me to stand and do nothing - i always feel like I need to be accomplishing something, which makes true time off difficult for me. But, the more I practice, the more I think I could get the hang of this.

It does, though, raise an interesting question. Why is it that people feel this insatiable need to do and to accomplish, and why is it just as bad within the church as it is without? Why is it that I find myself unable to just be, and instead always have to prove myself of having some worth, etc? I'm not sure i have a firm grip on the answer, but i believe when I do, i'm going to bottle it, write a book about it, and sell it for millions, and millions of dollars.

Transitions

2008-07-16T05:05:00.000-07:00

So, we survived our Mexico Trip, and the 3 day drive on either side of it. It was a good trip, though it rained every day - and not just sprinkles but actual torrential downpours, and I saw at least 4 tarantulas, which have this magical power to rob a man of his masculinity and leave him simply stunned. The soccer mom on our trip wasn't scared of them, but I sure as hell was. Which has created all sorts of identity issues for me now.

And, I get back to work yesterday, and my office is a dodger blue that makes my eyes hurt to see, and all my stuff is moved out and it really sort of hit me for the first time that I'm no longer employed there. I have some work to do this week - our final midweek youth worship is tonight, and I'm leading worship and they're having a goodbye party for Kim and I this sunday, so I'm not entirely done, but things are going to move on there without me.

Which leaves me, for the time being, unemployed. the church plant, which i'll probably start working for in August, won't pay me until September, and so I'm going to be looking for some things to do in the meantime. I was thinking about Crystal Meth, but I'll probably start with something softer, and pimping out Glen Rodebush to midget dominatrixes on friday nights.

It's a wierd thing to not have anything right now which i have to do. I'm sure I'll find some stuff, but i don't deal well with voids and waiting. Ministry is stressful, and requires a consistent amount of having your time being abused, but I think having nothing may actually be more stressful for me. And inside of all that - the wondering, the finances, all of it, there's a sense of peace. I know this is what i'm supposed to be doing, so in the meantime I'll just hang out.

Hecho en Mexico

2008-07-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

so, my final week as a youth pastor. I'm headed for Juarez, with People Building People to work in the neighborhood slums created by American factories which have opened there in the past 10 years. ahead of me, is a 3 day drive, with 30 HS kids. fantastic :D

i'm going to start the revolution, with my esses south of the boarder. Heche en Mexico! back in a bit.

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Victory is Mine

2008-06-29T04:43:00.000-07:00

Suck on that, wakeboards of the world!special thanks to Rodney Barbour for his photography, and for my wife Kim for sticking with me till I got it up. (there's gotta be a better way to say that)

This is what summers are made of

Wall-E

2008-06-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

I love Pixar movies. I haven't seen all of them, but i can't think of a single Pixar movie that wasn't brilliantly executed. They do a fantastic job of being really funny, and hitting an audience of both kids and adults at the same time without ever approaching inappropriate (and, it's just harder to be funny without being inappropriate). So I've been interested in seeing Wall-E since previews started popping up last year.

This movie was decidedly not what I expected it to be in a lot of ways. In some ways it was - the movie is visually stunning. Like, unseen, unheard of before in animated movies stunning. I was blown away by some of the animation and colors and scenes in this movie. In that sense, it is a pixar movie.

But the movie isn't the slapstick that Pixar movies normally are. For the first 45 minutes of this movie, there's no dialogue, except for 2 robots who each know one word, and then some cut scenes from "Hello, Dolly." And you don't miss the dialogue. The characters and the environment are really expressive and do a fantastic job communicating exactly what needs to be communnicated. There is a switch at some point where humans enter back into the story, and then the movie becomes a Pixar movie. The humans are funny backdrop characters, and when the movie has the human characters, it's exactly what you expect it to be.

But there is a disjointedness to the surrealness of an earth completely devoid of life (except for these two robots) and then the slapstickyness of a bunch of really fat humans who have been living lives of luxury on a spaceship for 700 years and have forgotten how to do anything themselves. There's a scene at the end, where Wall-e needs to be rebuilt, and the robots set about doing that - but when they do, and he comes back online (everytime Wall-e starts, it's the sound of a Mac startup), he's just a robot who has a job to do. It's an amazingly touching scene, as his robot friend tries to get him to remember who he is, and was competely unexpected. It's that kind of honesty and depth that make this movie great - in a kids movie, I didn't expect that dark of a turn - that immediately transitions to the captain of the ship being, well, comic relief. Pixar essentially made two movies here and put them together, and the transitions could have been a little easier.

The Washington Post said this:

"The idea that a company in the business of mainstream entertainment would make something as creative, substantial and cautionary as WALL-E has to raise your hopes for humanity.

and they're right. Pixar has done something entirely different and entirely not what you're expecting it to be. and they just about got it perfect. I'd definitely go see this one. It's not as funny as you're expecting it to be, but it is probably much more profound.

Awesome

2008-06-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

this made me laugh harder than anything in a long time

found money

2008-06-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

is the best kind of money.

I decided to clean out my change basket today, b/c pennies are the kinds of things that go into a child's mouth very easily. And so i take my bucket of random change that I've been collecting over the past 4 years and drop it off at my local Kroger's Coinstar machine (b/c i'm too lazy to count the money myself) - and low and behold, I find that I've collected $94.94 in the form of 774 pennies, 208 nickels, 338 dimes, 156 quarters and 4 sacagawea coins. Coinstar normally charges you about .09 for every dollar you find, but if you take it in the form of a gift certificate, they give you the whole amount.

So I now have $95 to spend at Amazon and I have no idea what to spend it on. Honestly, I don't need anything, but you should never spend found money on needed things - found money is for fun things. And given the selection at amazon, i'm sort of overwhelmed.

So you, blogging public, find me some cool crap at amazon for less than $100. shop wisely, so that if i buy something ultra cool you will get to share in the spoils of my victory.

Improving Things

2008-06-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

Given a sunday and nothing to do, Kim and I wandered around Home Depot, looking for crap we thought we could handle. and most normal people would come home, and work on projects as they have time - no real rush, or hurry. Most people, though, aren't crazy like me. So, between 9 pm last night and 1030 pm tonight, I managed to:

1. Rewire the Home Entertainment System

Having a son who is crawling everywhere and beginning to consider walking, it became obvious that my home entertainment system was going to have to be redone. Formerly, the Video game systems were on the right hand side on the bottom shelf. And with all the cables and such that go along with it, it's a 10 month old heaven. So the first project was to reroute every wire so that the two systems of electronics (Video games on the left and DVR/Receiver on the right) are on the top shelf. Sounds simple enough, but hiding Component cables for that many systems is a bear. I finally, using some wiring covering found at home depot, got all the cables hidden, and I think it's looking pretty good. I'm still not giving Circuit City $500 to come in and hang that, even if it was a bear of a project

2. Replaced all the dimmer switches downstairs

All our dimmers were broken - missing the knob, etc, and they just generally looked like crap. So I replaced all 3 of the downstairs light switches with these. Holy crap, was this an easy improvement. no pain whatsoever

3. Replace the downstairs faucet

If there's a hell, it's in replacing plumbing. Once I finally got the actual faucet replaced, it turns out that the draining system was crumbling. So I jimmy rigged together a drain system that I think works. We'll see over the next couple of days how many leaks spring in the drain - if it doesn't go right, i'm going to have to yank the whole damn vanity out of there and do it right. And doing it right, is simply not how I do home improvement.

It feels good, though, to be able to attack some projects and do them on my own. I like home improvement, and I like doing physical labor, because its nice to see the fruit of one's labor. And it's good to remind me that with some problems, you just have to get into them and then figure it out as you encounter the guts of the problem. Home improvement is a good reminder, that sometimes, you gotta break stuff to fix stuff. I've got breaking stuff down.

Humiliating

2008-06-19T15:02:00.001-07:00

So, most of you know that I own a boat. I'm privileged to own a boat with one of the finest people I've ever met in my life, a true friend who's been a friend of mine for a long time. we owned a different boat together, which we called "the Cincinnati 3-way," because He, Kim and I owned it together. Now that he has a significant other, he decided to rename this boat the "Cincinnati 4-way," and went that final step to lay the stickers on the back of the boat. That's some serious commitment. Paul also added this amazing device called Perfect Pass which is sort of a cruise control for boats, designed to help maintain a precise speed for wakeboarding/skiing (which is incredibly hard to do)

So today, we played some hookey from work (i hadn't had a day off for like 3 weeks), left Leo at the babysitter and took some friends on the mighty Ohio in the newly christened "Cincy 4-way." The weather was perfect, the river was really low at the city (about 27 feet) and it was a fantastic afternoon. We had a boatful of people who had never learned to wakeboard, so we spent the afternoon teaching them to. And everyone managed to get up. This picture is a picture of my wife - my just-under-5-ft 90lb wife - getting up on a wakeboard her first time on a wakeboard. But Kim is Kim - she loves an adventure, loves to try new things, and is normally good for them. I was really excited for her.

But, Kees got up. And Zach also got up, and Paul was a beast at wakeboarding. The only person, in fact, who could not manage to get the board up was myself. this is the 3rd time in as many years where I have tried and been completely unable to get up on a wakeboard. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, but I'm immensley frustrated.

so one of you monkeys is going to go out with me and spend an entire day until I learn to wakeboard. I don't want to hear any crap about work, or about being busy, or anything else. one of you is going to help me do it. it's your job.

\m/

2008-06-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

Oh, heavy metal. Music of my youth, and angsty teenage rebellion. Bearer of pentegrams, and scantily clad white-trash chicks. Where would I be without you? How would I know to verbalize and vocalize my anger about "the system," where would I learn to always substitute, no matter the meaning, "come" with "cum" (can i really say that on the internet?). I have a deep and abiding love for Heavy Metal.

But, Heavy metal, you have failed me. with the exception of Godsmack, the last 15 years in heavy metal have not been good. Pantera has sucked forever, and then Dimebag died, Ozzy's last few albums have been lackluster, Megadeth lost Dave Mustaine, and Metallica - the very essence of heavy metal, heavy metal's purfectors of the form, the band that set the standard by which all metal, no matter what subgenre, must be judged! - your last album was worse than anything I have ever heard.

Hope, however, springs eternal. So when Metallica says that a new album is coming out in september, my loins leap with glee. When they release riffs and parts of songs from it that make me ...and-justice-for-all giddy, hope is reborn with me. perhaps, we can be done with all the whiney bullcrap in pop music, perhaps rock can sack up, grow a pair, stop wearing makeup and girl pants and actually rock again. Perhaps there will be no more whining about their feelings or girls or the other bullcrap that weezer has foisted upon the world (who, along with their freak cousins radiohead, are responsible for all that is whiney in music). And so as metallica launches Mission:Metallica the 15 year old in me jumps in angry glee, again ready to don blue jeans and black teeshirts, to drink Jagermeister and cheap beer, and remember that Heavy metal is so much better than any other kind of music. the vaults over at mission allow you to download entire metallica concerts from their 25 year career, remembering them in all their pissed off glory, to see photos, to enter contests, and to preview what may be the most important rock album for me in the past 12 years.

so, here's some metal up your ass. because metallica rulz your world and if you don't like them, you're an ignorant wretch, and i'm sure that Miley Cyrus will enjoy you supporting her music.

Finals

2008-06-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

I'm sort of exhausted today. This past week, I took 10 Crestview students to Ichthus, the annual Christian, summer, music festival just outside of Lexington, KY. It was a typical Ichthus- emo kids listening to bad music, a nearly torrential rainfall friday night, camping for a week, etc etc - which could spawn all sorts of blog topics from me. blog topics like

why this guy has a market in art. or in the church. or anywhere in America. Seriously, this guy's continued career is a failure of both the church and market forces. (I think this one is the worst. )
why are Christian kids so into emo music? is church music so bad that we drive kids to crap like this?
what is it about the weather of central kentucky that calls forth massive storms when 20,000 HS kids gather to camp?

i could go on, but at the end of the day, i'd just end up sounding, and being, bitter and bitching about the Church. And, Saturday night was maybe the most powerful communion service I have ever been to in my life, so even with everything else that I'd smack Ichthus around about, for the things that matter, they're doing some things well.

The substory of all of this is that I'm rapidly approaching my end time at Crestview. This will be my last Ichthus for a long long time (probably? hopefully?), and in a couple of weeks, I'll go on my last short term mission trip, at least in my immediate future. I'll be done with Wednesday nights, sunday mornings - all things that have been constant in my life for the past six and a half years. While I'm ready for the coming transition, moving into something really undefined is unnerving for me. And because it's unnerving, it's probably good for me. But I'm caught up in how some of these things which are so incredibly mundane for me may be the last time I do them. So much of what has been important to me over the past 10 years or so has been in the mundane, and the day to day, and I'm trying really hard not to miss anything.

For now, though, it's just good to be home. camping is nice, but nothing beats a real bed.

nothing is happening

2008-06-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

that's not true at all. but it's all happening so fast that i don't have time to think about it or talk about it or plan it or react to it. i told kim tonight i'm tired of living life at this pace. because it's never really living. it's surviving. and surviving sucks. unless they're going to give you a million dollars at the end of it. and noone's going to give me a million dollars.

unless you are. you. give me a million dollars

Squeezebox

2008-05-27T07:39:00.001-07:00

I love the song Squeezebox by the Who, because I always sort of secretly knew that even though it was clearly about an accordion there was a much more inappropriate level to that song (thank you, songfacts.com for clarifying and siding with my own perversion). The Who, by the way, are one of those bands who I think get overlooked in the 'best classic rock band of all time' discussion. Amazing musicians.

So anyway, I love the song, but also have a special affinity in my heart for the actual instrument, the accordion. So I've been bugging Rodney to come and play accordion with me when we do the Open Mic Night sunday nights at Habits cafe in Oakley. This weekend, Rodney brought out his magical accordion and blew the bar away. I really think it was the first time that an accordion had been played in that setting, and it was perfect. I covered "Blue Sky" by the Allman Brothers (Hooooooooly crap that song is boring without the guitar), "Green and Dumb" by Roger Clyne, "Friend of the Devil" by the Grateful Dead, and "Call me Al" by Paul Simon. Of course, the last song killed and people were dancing and having a great time - but I'm telling you that no matter how good (or bad) I am at that gig, having an accordion accompanying me sent each of those songs (esp "Call me Al") massively up the steps of cool factor.

I think I stressed Rodney to his absolute farthest point in terms of not being comfortable - I never really practice for the sunday night gig, and Rodney being the much better musician than me, is used to knowing what he's doing when he walks on stage. We'll continue to work on that. And, sunday night was great. Good people came and hung out, and we played good music and drank good beer and met some new people from Oakley. This is the stuff memorial day weekends are made of.

Another Spring Weekend

2008-05-15T17:36:00.001-07:00

So I couldn't help but notice that it's going to rain this weekend. I think that's like the 4th straight weekend where it's going to be either rainy or chilly (this weekend looks like both! Joy!). Sorry to say, chumps, that I'm not gonna be here sloshing through may with you losers. Instead, Kim and I are headed to Penasco Del Sol in Rocky Point, Mexico to join all the other Roger Clyne fans at the Circus Mexicus.

Have fun in Ohio, suckers!

That's my boy...

2008-05-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

thats just how he rolls

Political Post #2

2008-05-08T10:57:00.001-07:00

aight, i really wish i could, but i can't help it. two political posts in one week. this one is what-for awesome. it's an article at Cnn.com about how Hillary is touting her support amongst white folks. A better headline, which i'm stealing from a friend, would be "Obama loses white racists vote" but I digress. check out this quote from Hillary:

Clinton cited an Associated Press poll "that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

So Clinton, who has no shot at winning at this point, unless she pulls something crazy shady, is out there talking. Which is mistake number one. But then she says, effectively, two things:

the working and hard working americans are white

that the people who vote for her are those who are the least educated

who is in charge of her and the things she said. and who decides that this is a good way to woo voters? I love it.

Beating a Dead horse

2008-05-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Let me start out by saying I like horses. I don't think horses should be treated cruelly, I don't think any animal should be treated cruelly. This post is not about horses. ok, well maybe, but not really.

I don't blog about politics much. I love politics. It's a sport to me, I love the strategy, the desperation moves, the boldness, the backstabbing, the dirty campaigning - all of it. I love politics. But, I can turn into an ass when I'm getting into politics - b/c for me it's a bloodsport, and as adults we should be able to yell and scream and holler at each other and then still be friends. But, not everyone is like that, so when I really get into politics, I can turn into an asshole. So, as much as this post isn't about horses, it's also not really about politics, or me favoring one candidate over the other (because, frankly, i think they all suck and i'm not even sure i'm voting this year).

But last week, as Hillary is making her bid to win the democratic primary in Indiana, she told everyone to bet on 8 Belles in this past weekend's Kentucky Derby. She talked about how this philly was special, the only female in the whole race, out there competing with the boys, and how she was going to show heart just like Hillary has as the only female candidate. And, to be fair, she did. 8 belles ran well, losing to a horse everyone picked to win, and running hard.

then she crossed the finish line, in second place, broke both of her ankles and had to be euthanized on the the track.

Now, again, for clarity's sake, I'm not for killing horses. I think it's incredibly sad what happened to that horse, a tragic accident that simply sucks. But the fantasticness of Hillary picking this horse, pulling her nonsensical feminism card (while all along claiming she doesn't want this to be about gender) and then the horse coming in a respectable, but still not the winner, second and then having to be euthanized is a story that i think is worth noting. I like when the universe jacks around with people.

Family Stuff

2008-04-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

So we have our first real baby issue. my son got pink eye (probably from too much Woestershire Sauce) this weekend, so rather than getting to go into work today, I worked from home. In between 45 minute waits on the phone with children's, a wait at the pharmacy, trying to figure out how to get an ointment into my 8 month old son's eye (it's not as easy as it sounds), i think i managed to get some work done.

but, i really do enjoy days like this with him. he's a lot of fun right now. he's into everything - I got the newest Mario Kart game for the Wii, and it came with a plastic steering wheel that he thinks is the best thing ever. while he plays with that, i play the game) and really curious and smiley. being a dad is fantastic.

so, not much of an update. We did get some fantastic pictures taken by a friend who's a photographer and now we're going to go broke ordering prints. But, there are some really good pics there.