Name your favorite and least favorite characters in Star Wars.

Favorite:  Yoda (from Episode V) 

The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite Star Wars film.  It has the perfect balance of action, humor, and heart.  It also introduces viewers to one of the greatest film characters of all time:  Jedi Master Yoda.  Even though Yoda is only a puppet I fully believe that he is a living, breathing creature.  He is funny, powerful, wise, and most of all, interesting. 

 

 

Least Favorite:  Sy Snootles

Sy is the lead vocalist in the Max Rebo Band that is seen and unfortunately heard in The Return of the Jedi.  This is only in reference to the 1997 Special Edition of the film.  Sy is a part of a scene that is so awful that it catapulted this completely insignificant character to the top (or bottom) spot on my list.

Who are your favorite and least favorite characters?  Why?

Watching Avatar: The Last Airbender

We finally finished it!  I don’t really know what to say about the conclusion other than I loved it.  It was epic and emotional.  I was a bit disappointed in Book 3 that we didn’t get to see Uncle Iroh very much so it was very cool to see him again at the end of the series.  I missed him.  I know the series was made for kids but I was actually expecting there to be more casualties than there were.  Not that I am complaining. 

My kids loved it as well.  Since we finished it they have probably watched the finale at least two more times and have watched various episodes throughout the series.  They could watch this show every day…I think I could as well.

Cereal makes the man.

I love cereal.  I eat cereal virtually every day.  My kids love cereal as well – I guess they get that from me.  When I was a kid, I always had this dream that when I reached adulthood I would be able to control how much cereal I had in my pantry.  I knew that when I became a man that would mean I would have a vast amount of cereal.  Not one box.  Not two boxes.  Not even four boxes.  I was convinced that I would have an almost unlimited selection.  This would include the healthy stuff with whole grains and fiber, and also the good stuff with sugar, frosting, and other awesome ingredients. 

I have been married for ten years – I got married two days after graduating from college – so my entire independent adulthood has been spent with my wife.  In all that time we have flirted with total cereal perfection.  We would get our cereal selection built up to 4 and sometimes even 5 boxes.  Occasionally we would get to 6 boxes but that usually meant we were running out of certain varieties and there was so little there we didn’t want to eat it and we were forced to buy a new box or two of cereal.  (No one wants to finish off the box of cereal.  It’s all powdery and that makes the milk mushy and gives it the texture of baby food.  I’ll pass.)  So even though we came close to realizing my dream we weren’t quite there.  We were so close that I could taste it, but the final goal was elusive.

That is, until my two oldest boys started eating cereal at a rate that surprised even me.  They were the missing ingredient in my search.  They eat cereal twice a day and sometimes more.  Their tastes are varied but they migrate towards the sweeter brands.  Due to this, we have been forced to keep plenty of cereal on hand for them and for me.  (My wife will have a bowl every now and then but she does not understand our cereal fascination.  It’s her loss.) 

Two weeks ago I opened the pantry door and looked at the top shelf where the cereal is kept.  (If we kept it on a lower shelf the boys would have unlimited access to it and that would be a disaster for everyone involved.)  As I gazed on the 9 different boxes of cereal a tear of joy worked its way down my cheek.  I had arrived.  I was now the man I had dreamed of becoming so many years ago.  I could see my 7-year-old self standing next to me and beaming with pride.  I gave the 7-year-old me an imaginary high-five and closed the pantry door.  Hello adulthood.

God Gave Rock and Roll to You

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. – Philippians 4:8

When I was in my early twenties, back in my college days, I was confident, sure of myself, and completely convinced I had all the big and important things in life figured out. I’ve known a lot of people that have gone down that road. (There must be some “full-of-ourselves” hormone that most college students have.) I had all the answers. Or at least all the answers that really mattered in my life. I knew what I believed and nothing would dissuade me from my convictions. Those were simpler times.

One of the main areas of my life where I was resolute in my beliefs was in regards to the music I listened to. Through much study, prayer, and fasting (I’m using poetic license here) I decided that I would only listen to Christian music. No more of that terrible secular music that was birthed in the very pits of hell. That music was causing me to sin, backslide, and abandon the faith (once again – speaking poetically). No more would I listen to the likes of Nirvana, Collective Soul, Pearl Jam, and most definitely not The Beatles. These bands were comprised of sinners and that meant that nothing they could say would help me in my spiritual journey. In fact, what they said would have the opposite effect. From my superior vantage point, secular bands had nothing to offer Christians. They were devoid of all honesty and truth. And even though their music was really good and a lot of fun to listen to I would turn my back on them so that I could continue down the straight and the narrow. I had convinced myself that unless the songs I listened to were clearly and without prevarication speaking about or to God, then they were useless to me. What benefit could songs like The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love offer me? I had fallen prey to the faulty thinking that has trapped so many Christians throughout time: God is too small to operate outside of the creativity and the machinations of believers. Perhaps even more significantly I had failed to comprehend true worship and it was in that failing that my mind and my motives went astray.

Worship goes beyond words and catch phrases. It does not need a quota of religious terminology and expressions. Real worship does not come about if we say “Holy” or “Jesus” or “Praise” enough times. Worship is the very nuts and bolts of our lives. It comes from the most basic and elemental parts of our souls. True worship is uncomplicated and many times unremarkable. God lives in the mundane; in the boring details. He excels in working with the everyday and the commonplace. Scripture tells us that if mankind fails to praise Him like we should then nature itself will cry out. God’s glory is proclaimed by the sun and stars, their unspoken truth is being revealed to the world. If God is capable of eliciting praise from inanimate objects, then why are we so convinced that He can’t be glorified by the tongues of sinners; whether they intend it or not. Why do we recoil at the thought that God could communicate His truth through the creativity and the talents of unbelievers? That was my error, and perhaps the error of many. I was limiting God. I had confined Him to a little corner of my world. He could live, move, and act in that space, but nowhere else. He could speak through my Christian songs. But He was incapable of receiving praise or communicating truth through the thoughts, words, and music of an unbeliever. Simply put, my God was not so big or so strong or so mighty and there were some things that my God could not do.

When this realization hit me, I’ll admit, it hurt. It shamed me. I was so arrogant in my ignorance. I was master of my universe and to be frank, my universe sucked. I had heard the phrase, “All truth is God’s truth” since childhood and I thought I believed it. Sadly, I had learned to compartmentalize my life. Well intentioned, I had constructed separate spaces for the sacred and the secular. God was allowed to speak to me and to receive my praise through the unambiguously Christian. God was overlooked, or even worse, not welcome, in the secular. I could enjoy sports, food, television, and even movies as long as those areas of my life were separate from my hearing and understanding of God’s voice. For some reason I had no problem with those areas in their unbaptized form. Music on the other hand was different. Secular music was dangerous, frightening and decidedly not Christian. The line must be drawn here and no further! I would remain safe and comfortable surrounded by songs that didn’t offend or question me. Songs that played it safe; using the appropriate language and ideas.

After the aforementioned epiphany, I realized how narrow my thinking had been. God was at work in ways that my mind could not fathom. His truth was being proclaimed and communicated by the most unlikely people imaginable. But isn’t that just like Him? Scripture is full of examples of God using damaged and even unbelieving spokespersons. Nebuchadnezzar proclaimed:

Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God…no other god can save in this way.

He was in no way a “believer” but he spoke the truth: There is no other God that can save in that way. King Darius wrote a decree extolling God’s power after Daniel had been saved from the lion’s den:

For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end. He rescues and he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.

Wow! That’s a praise song right there. We have no evidence that Darius was a believer yet he wrote those words for the entire nation to read and hear. The truth was crafted and penned by a sinner and it was heard by most of the civilized world.

Perhaps the most amazing example in Scripture is the time when God used Balaam’s donkey to save his life, by speaking. Yes, a donkey spoke to protect it’s master who was disobeying God. If God can speak the truth through an animal then I have no problem believing that He can use the likes of John Lennon or Mick Jagger.

So what does this all mean? I think there are few things that we should keep in mind when considering these ideas. Most importantly: Use wisdom. I’m not advocating jumping in head first into all the world offers us. Much of it is garbage and should be treated as such. Much of is dangerous and deadly; Flee from temptation and all that. But that is where discernment and wisdom come into play. Know your strengths and your inclinations and make good choices on what you will entertain and what will entertain you. Secondly, look closer, listen more carefully, and examine more fully. The real stuff, the things that really count are not always easy to spot or easy to ingest. Those things have to be tested carefully and completely. Your search will lead you down some unforeseen roads, and that is ok. As Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message would put it; God plays in ten thousand places. Don’t underestimate God’s ability to make His truth known. Finally, don’t be afraid of the difficult questions. When you listen to secular artists you are going to be challenged. They don’t see the world through our eyes. Many times they are going to confront God directly and perhaps even have a few negative things to say about Him or his children. Guess what? God doesn’t mind. In fact, I think he appreciates the honesty much more than the shallow spiritualized rhetoric that is found in so much of our modern Christian music. To prove that He doesn’t mind He made sure His revealed Word was full of questions. There are plenty of examples in Scripture of this. If you spend enough time with the secular your faith will be questioned. Rest assured of that. Embrace that. These people are searching and are simply expressing that search in the only way they know how; through their talents. Mankind has questions, even Christians have questions, and it is much healthier to accept that and figure out ways to confront those questions than it is to close our eyes, ears, and minds to the very things that could be a catalyst for growth.

At this point you might be wondering what the passage from Philippians has to do with any of this. Simple: Truth, nobility, purity, loveliness, and excellence can and will be found in a thousand different places. Don’t be afraid to think without limits when searching for them because contrary to popular opinion, God is limitless and He is looking forward to taking your hand and revealing His truth and His glory to you in ways that are beyond your imagining. God has made everything beautiful in its time and he created humanity with an innate ability to appreciate truth and beauty. He did this so that we could and would recognize the Originator of that Truth and Beauty. God is at work in the sublime, in the transcendent, in the fallen, and in the broken. God is drawing all men unto Himself and He uses more than His Words or His people to accomplish this. He even uses those things that entertain us. Just one thing: Be sure to recognize when God is making Himself known through these broken vessels. If you don’t, it would be a waste of a really great song.

The things we enjoy are channels through which the divine glory strikes us, and those who love and delight in any good thing may yet learn to love God.   Gilbert Meilaender

Watching Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 2)

We finished watching Book 2 over the weekend.  The boys wanted to start Book 3 right away, but we limit how much television they are allowed to watch and they were at their limit.  We will probably start Book 3 this weekend.

What can I say about the season finale?  It was epic, emotional, intimate, and very much a cliffhanger.  The decisions that were made by certain characters were in turns heroic, selfless, courageous, frustrating, and heartbreaking.  The relationships that interest me the most are Aang and Katara, and Iroh and Zuko.  Both got plenty of attention and both relationships were pushed to a whole new level.  I’m very curious where these four will end up at the end of the series.  I have certain things I am hoping to see happen, but I have been happy with what the writers have done so far so I will continue to trust them.

A few words…

If you are new to this blog, welcome.  This blog doesn’t really have any particular focus, and that is probably very obvious.  I enjoy writing and I figured this would be a good outlet for me.  I write about anything that interests me.  It could be a simple post about my family.  Or, it could be a sarcastic rant.  Due to that it might be hard to know if this is a blog you would want to visit on a regular basis.  Let me help you out with that:  It is.  See how simple that was?  Now everyone is happy…especially me.

Finally, if you do happen to stop by and read a bit, feel free to comment.  I really appreciate feedback and discussion.  Don’t be afraid to disagree with me either.  Being challenged is a big part of life and I’m no stranger to it.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you found something worthwhile.  I hope it won’t be your last visit.  God bless!

Bad sportswriting in Nashville

Vince Young is a lightning rod for criticism and praise in the Nashville area.  I am a huge Titans fan, therefore, I will support whoever is playing for the team.  I like Young and I think he has received an unfair amount of criticism in his time in Tennessee.  He has made mistakes and those have been well documented, but there are times where the fans and the media use him as the scapegoat for every bad thing that happens to the team.  The most recent example of this comes from Paul Kuharsky, an ESPN writer that covers the AFC South.  Paul used to write for The Tennessean but has been writing for ESPN for a few years now.  He still lives in Nashville.  Kuharsky has never been a Young fan.  He appears on one of the local sports radio shows – The Wake Up Zone on 104.5 The Zone.  He likes to ruffle feathers when he is on the air, and he is usually pretty successful.  As a writer he does a good job.  He is a talented writer and his stories are focused, well written, and usually factual.  Here is what Paul Kuharsky wrote in a recent blog post on ESPN:

Last week I asked whether Jeff Fisher’s benching of Vince Young during an ugly loss to Pittsburgh contradicted his longtime philosophy.

After reading Jim Wyatt’s game story from the Titans’ win over the Giants, we now know Fisher had more than sufficient cause for the move and didn’t deserve the flak he took for the move.

In fact, I’d have had no problem if Fisher started Kerry Collins against the Steelers knowing what we know now.

This from Wyatt: Sources familiar with the situation said Young missed or arrived late for at least two meetings leading up to the Pittsburgh game, including one Friday. While he was excused for one meeting, sources said Young’s overall approach lacked the seriousness it needed.

That might explain why Coach Jeff Fisher didn’t hesitate to pull Young and replace him with Kerry Collins in the fourth quarter when the Titans trailed the Steelers by only 13 points.

He goes on in this article to show how Young has displayed a pattern of this type of behavior.  Granted, most of the events he cites, occurred in Young’s first or second year – but Kuharsky doesn’t include that bit of information.  Nevertheless, Young has not shown the type of maturity that you would expect from a starting NFL quarterback.  That is something he needs to improve and I hope he does.  Here is where Kuharsky misses the point, or obscures the facts, or misleads his readers, or flat-out distorts the story to make his point:  Young missed or arrived late for at least two meetings leading up to the Pittsburgh game, including one Friday. While he was excused for one meeting, sources said Young’s overall approach lacked the seriousness it needed.  Kuharsky cleverly avoids the fact that Young was given permission to miss one meeting to take Steve McNair’s children to an event.   Kuharsky mentions that Young was excused for one meeting, but he doesn’t include the specifcs of the missed meeting in his summary of the events.  He leaves the “one missed meeting and late to one other meeting” in the air so that the unobservant reader will miss the facts.  Kuharsky’s bias is obvious in that he doesn’t mention why Young missed the meeting even though he admits that Young was excused.  So, that leaves us with Young being late to one meeting.  Kuharsky doesn’t tell us how late Young was to the meeting.  Was it 5 minutes?  15 minutes?  We don’t know and it doesn’t sound like Kuharsky does either.  Basically, Kuharsky builds his whole case on Young’s immaturity on one tardy.  I’m not defending Young for being late, but Kuharsky makes it sound like Young missed every practice this year, didn’t watch any game footage, didn’t meet with the coaches at all, and killed a couple of puppies just for good measure. 

Paul Kuharsky needs to let go of whatever grudge he has against Vince Young and he needs to just do his job and cover the AFC South.

Rant of the Day: The “Reply to All” email

I work for the State of Tennessee.  I work in the Disability Determination Section.  There are Disability offices all over the country.  Well, today we all received a test email from a particular office to see if they had everyone on their email list.  It worked and they specifically stated to disregard the message.  Of course that is not what happened though.  People from all over the country began to reply to the test message.  At first, it was those clueless souls that honestly don’t realize that they are not supposed to press the “Reply to All” button.  They responded with questions like, “What is this about?” and “Is this for me?”  This is the cream of the crop right there…

After about 20  or 30 of those types of messages, the “comedians” started getting involved.  These are those people who think they are God’s gift to comedy yet for some strange reason no one else in the world sees it.  These class clowns started pressing the “Reply to All” button and sending little shout outs to all their friends and everyone one else in the DDS family.  The rest of us were not amused.  Not in the least.  30+ of these messages poured in to my email account in the matter of seconds…and then the fun really started.

The final group of “Reply to All” button pushers takes this whole situation to a new, previously unexplored level.  These are the best of the best, the top of the food chain, the genius level thinkers.  These people understand the situation and they know exactly how to fix things:  By sending an email to thousands of DDS employees to stop hitting the “Reply All” button when they respond to the Test Message.  They send this email by hitting the “Reply to All” button.  I’m choking on the irony.  Here are a few of their informative and helpful messages:

The Angry and Serious Response:

Stop responding to this. It’s sending messages to several THOUSAND people all over the US. They sent a test message to a blanket of DHS sites including the lists of all their employees. It was just a test. Please stop trying to be clever. Try to be professional and stop filling thousands of people’s inboxes with repeated replies.

The Unhelpful Helpful Response:

Please do not hit reply ALL (just reply to *****if you wish) with your comments. They are clogging every one’s in box.

Thank you,

The DICtionary Definition Response:

Disregard definition:  to pay no attention to :  treat as unworthy of regard or notice

And my favorite, The I’m a Total Moron Response:

I think my head just asploded.

I”m going to start using that word: Asploded.  I don’t really know what it means but it has to be something totally awesome.  In conclusion, when you get an email that is sent to hundreds, thousands, or even just a handful of people, don’t hit the “Reply to All” button unless the all in “ALL” really need to get your input.

Watching Avatar: The Last Airbender

 

We just finished watching Appa’s Lost Days and Lake Laogai and I am even more impressed by this show than I already was.  And that is saying something.  Appa, or as my five-year old calls him – Pappa – is Aang’s flying bison.  Yeah, you read that right.  He is a flying bison.  Not only that, he is huge, has six legs, and a huge tail.  He is also one of the coolest characters in the show.  He is alternately funny and terrifying, amusing and fiercely protective of his friends.  Following his story in Appa’s Lost Days was an impressive bit of storytelling.  Here you have an animal that does not speak or communicate in any real way, but the writers and animators were able to tell an emotionally gripping and satisfying story that centered entirely on him.  Beautiful stuff!  And to top it off, they conclude that particular storyline masterfully in Lake Laogai.   My whole family is very excited about the final three episodes of Book 2.  I fully expect to be blown away.

Bad sports writing in Nashville.

I’m sure this is a problem in most cities, but since I live in Nashville, I am going to focus on the dreadful state of sports reporting and sports writing in this city.  I understand that Nashville is not a major market.  Nashville is not a large city.  However, there are two professional sports franchises in this city: The Titans (NFL) and the Predators (NHL) along with a minor league baseball team, the Sounds, and a quite a few colleges in the area.  You would think that with that many teams that have a national, let alone a regional, identity, the sports coverage would be better than it is.  Awhile back, I posted a few comments about certain sports radio hosts that got under my skin, but that is a hard thing to follow since sports radio doesn’t leave the kind of “paper trail” that the print media does.  Therefore, I have decided to change my focus to the sports writers in this town. 

My first example of bad sports writing comes from someone who is usually one of the better writers in the city.  David Climer writes for the Tennessean and as I said, he is typically a pretty astute and intelligent writer.  I don’t agree with his opinions that often, but that doesn’t mean the man doesn’t know how to write or cover the teams in Nashville and the surrounding areas.  After Sunday’s horrible Titans game Climer had this to say about the game:

“With Johnson rendered null and void, the Titans offense slipped out of its comfort zone. Throwing that many passes against a physical, blitz-happy defense like Pittsburgh is a recipe for disaster.”

There are quite a few things wrong with what Climer wrote here.  First, is he talking about how many passes the team threw, or how many passes Young threw?  The reason I ask, is that most of that article is about the Vince Young benching controversy.  It would appear that he is saying that because Chris Johnson was not having any success, the Titans were forced to throw too many passes with Young in the game.  But that doesn’t make any sense.  Young only threw 10 passes and completed seven of them.  He threw two interceptions and one incomplete as well.  Young had a bad game, but it wasn’t because he was throwing the ball too much.  It was because he made a few crucial mistakes when he threw the ball.  That’s a big difference.  But, let’s assume that Climer is talking about the team as a whole – which is more likely.  The Titans threw the ball 35 times in that game.  If you look at the stat line and you see 35 pass attempts by the Titans then you might conclude that the Steelers’ defense forced the Titans to throw the ball too much and that lead to the loss.  Too bad the facts of the game don’t back that up at all.  As stated earlier, when Young left the game in the 3rd quarter he had thrown the ball 10 times.  Backup QB Kerry Collins came in and threw the ball an additional 25 times.  So was the aforementioned disaster after Collins started throwing the ball around?  No.  The Titans were already down 16-3 when Collins came in to the game.  Disaster struck well before the Titans started throwing “that many passes.”  In fact, if you look a little more closely at the numbers, the Titans actually didn’t have any success on offense until they started throwing the ball more often.  Collins threw 20 passes in the final two drives of the game.  The second to last drive resulted in the only offensive TD of the game for either team.  The final drive was after the Titans recovered the onside kick and were desperately trying to tie the game.  So, basically what Climer is suggesting is that the Titans, by going pass happy in the first 3 quarters and throwing the ball 15 times, doomed themselves to disaster.  Does that make sense to anyone?

If you are going to write about sports then at least pay attention to the sport you are supposed to be covering.  Don’t just write a story based on what you think happened or what you expected to happen. 

Bad form David Climer!  We expect better work from you and your fellow sports writers.