...And We're Back

Ok, been away from the blog for a while. But not any more. Some thoughts and updates for your weekend reading pleasure:

1. Amy and the boys took off for a week with Amy's parents down in TX. They had a blast. J (the irony of using just one letter for his name is rich...) has been sad to be back. He loved playing in the mud, riding his bike, hanging with the grandparents, etc... It's nice down there.

2. While they were away, I took the chance to do some extra tax returns here at work, and to steal away to DC for a weekend to visit with some good friends. It's nice to have different friends all over the place, and my time in DC was excellent. Did lots of dicsussing/arguing about: Biblical church leadership, vocations, and who will win the NL East. Good times.

3. Continuing on the sports note: your NCAA scoring leader is Charron Fisher of the Niagra Purple Eagles. Where is young Mr. Fisher from you ask? He hails from Pennsauken, NJ - the lovely and gritty hometown of yours truly.

4. Lastly, we were celebrating the reunion of our family after their trip by doing some post dinner dancing/tackling/running around our living room while listening to some loud music. In preparation of the coming St. Patty's day, we were listening to "Whiskey In The Jar." J's question: "Dad, what's whiskey?" I replied: "Son, that's what Daddy puts on his corn flakes...." No just kidding, actually we went ahead and switched the song to the "Cars" (the Pixar movie) version of "Life Is A Highway."

Good Stuff

There are two music projects out there about which I am quite excited. Both are related in that the message of both projects lies in the order of the songs on the album. I am guessing most thoughtful musicians attempt do do this, but these two have done it in quite compelling fashion:

1. Counting Crows: Favorite band of A and I. Their new album is called "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings" The basic message is that all of life is about the recklessness of Saturday nights, followed by the pain/regret/hangover each Sunday morning. Adam Duritz (lead singer) shares how the album is born of a life trying to push everyone away and live a completely isolated life, and the bitter taste of the fruit of his folly. His pursuit of isolation, with the hope of avoiding pain, resulted in the worst kind of pain. He speaks of isolation, community, and restoration.

Favorite line so far, from the song "Cowboys": "This is a list of the things I should have been, but I'm not..."

The album is not out yet, but thanks to NPR and WXPN/World Cafe Live (here in Philly), you can listen to a 45 minute performance/explanation at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18777266


2. Jon Foreman (of Switchfoot) has a compelling project as well. He has already released two EPs, called "Fall" and "Winter," and he has two more upcoming. "Fall" speaks of the real pain of life in this world, bad decisions, injustice, etc... "Winter" includes two excellent songs about death.

He does a good job of expressing the reality of these things. So much so, that I have spent a decent amount of time discussing his songs with a good friend -- asking questions like "He's not really saying what I think he's saying, is he?!?!?" Good, honest stuff. "Fall" and "Winter" both bring a heavy (lethal?) dose of melancholy, but I look forward to "Spring."

Recollections

A and I went out for Thai food last night. I don't really like Thai food, but A enjoys it a bunch. And the place we went was pretty dang good.

My favorite food items from my multiple trips to the kingdom of Thailand:
- slurpees from 7-11
- sizzler at the royal garden hotel
- little bananas at every buffet
- fried pork on the side of the road near the ambassador jomtien
- DQ
- BK in the BKK airport
- European food at all the tasty European restaurants in Chiang Mai and Ko Samui
- pizza at the Pizza Garden in Ko Samui

As you can see, I'm not a real adventurous eater when travelling. However, it was good to recall the fine times spent travelling over the years last night with A.

Have a happy year of the rat. Go "bao" some jiaozi and eat them, or just get some orange chicken from Panda Express at the mall. Do what you gotta do.









Lastly, a little picture here below that may drum up a few Thai memories for some of you:

Happy Tuesday

It's a big day in the political arena. I love this stuff, it's like a big soap opera and I can't get enough of it. I've come across two incidents that were somewhat odd. One was national and one was local, and both involved Mike Huckabee.

I was watching CNBC (the financial channel) this morning, and they had four pundits on there commenting on the coming day's events. The final question centered on Huckabee and questioned his attentiveness to lowering taxes (a typically conservative issue). The first guy answered the question straight up, and the last guy said he couldn't imagine Huckabee succeeding in even a vice-presidential role because, "who knows what this guy would say, especially about religion." And that was it.

The second time I bumped into this was in the editorial section of the Sunday paper. The reported went on and on about Romney's flip-flopping, and McCain's stance on immigration, etc... The reporter's only quote decrying Huckabee, "he was a Southern Baptist minister, and that's all that need be said."

I'm not carrying water for Huckabee, but I will blast those who "fear" Huckabee's religious tendencies with the one of the greatest insults of our current age: That's Not Very Tolerant.

Now that I have that off my chest, go on about your Super Tuesday, and enjoy your Mardi Gras celebrations.... Be sure to get to church tomorrow for Ash Wednesday.

I think (hope) we have the next Sidney Crosby on our hands. This is J on his first skating lesson (four weeks ago). B provides good comedy on this one, his first line is "J's not doing it Dad!" Funny.


However, here is J at his fourth skating lesson (last night), unbelievable progress :

Three Years Gone By

Yes, we love where we are now. AND Yes, we sure miss this place.

A (not so) funny event

Ok, I'm back after a bit of a delay for a quick post. One somewhat memorable event of the weekend: we passed a pet store en route to another store and the boys wanted to go to the petstore. We went back to the petstore, and there were four or so people out front who were holding dogs on leashes. The dogs appeared to be of the pit bull variety, and the dogs were wearing coats that said "adopt me" on them. The funny thing is that the dogs were not nice. The people holding them encouraged the boys not to touch them, and one of the dogs lunged at B on our way out. I think this helped affirm my predisposition to never adopt a dog that is foaming at the mouth-- even if he wears a cool little "adopt me" coat.

All right, the stock market is a bit wacky now and I have to convince *myself* and our clients, who are nervously calling, that I know what I'm talking about....

Food For Urban Thought

Something to put in your pipe and toke on a bit:

1. "The country is the place where there are more plants than people, and the city is the place where there are more people than plants, and since God loves people far more than He loves plants, He loves the city more than He loves the country."
--Bill Crispin

2. "Dad, I don't want to live in the country. It doesn't have all the cool parts..." --My son J, while holding my hand and walking down 18th Street on January 13, 2008.

A Late New Year's Posting

I just spilled coffee all over my desk. I saved the computer, but sacrificed a few documents I had printed. All in all, it was a worthy trade-off.

Here's a quick post with a few pics from new year's day. We have a big parade where men wear dresses and drink lots of cheap beer. Without further ado, here are a couple of pics of our kids and neighborhood.


1. This is a picture of one of the string bands, who are actually very good. Check out the people hanging out of the windows with their bottles in their hand:



2. This is J and B in front of some of the props for the parade. As you can see, J is hungover from a rowdy New Year's Eve and B is looking upon him with no compassion. An additional note, the prison-like building in the background is our local elementary school:

My Kids = Hosed

We occasionally fire up the music loud, and do a little dancing around the living room after dinner. The boys get nuts, and A even sometimes joins us. I subscribe to rhapsody.com (on a side note, DO THE SAME, it's excellent to have any and every song at your listening pleasure) and I draw upon my "recently listened to" queue to pull a few songs for dancing. Well, I was playing DJ last night for our post-dinner craziness, and I noticed the following lyrics in a few of the songs I chose:

"Now he's having a smoke, and she's taking a drag, now they're going to bed, and my stomach is sick...."

so i changed it to another song which involved "living on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine...."

so i once again chose another song that had "we laughed all the way to hell, saying yes this is fine promotion...."



All that to say, while I hope they embrace good music as they grow, I want to guide them away from all that the lyrics suggest.....May God have mercy on us all, everyone.

Lastly, we finished up with some David Crowder's (you know, to get a Jesus song in there...) "Here Is Our King" -- which in my opinion is perhaps the finest of "the passion movement" songs.

EXTRA CREDIT: can you identify the three songs from the lyrics given above?

A Christmas Roundup

And some updates from a very fine Christmas season.

1. I used to drink the occassional adult beverage from this (that's a "Curious George" jelly jar if you can't tell):






Now, thanks to a nice gift from my Father-in-law, I can now use this:











2. Another enjoyable treat was a brief visit with a buddy from back in our SH years. We enjoyed an hour or so recalling our past few years since leaving the big country.

3. It's been three years since our abrupt departure from SH. It seems to be more and more of a blur each year. However, A and I are so grateful for the place we are now, and (in some ways) even for the dark hours and days in the process of getting here.

4. There were a few more fun events/discoveries throughout the week, and I'll be checking in with them soon. Lastly, maybe a New Year's Resolution should be to figure out how to put up a post with something other than a list and a few pics. Someday I'll figure that out, but not today.

two more things

I want to add to my "things I like" list, just two things:

1. I really, really enjoy the bud light commercials where it shows the guy who just says "dude" in a bunch of different settings. It seems there are two of them now, and both are excellent. The one below is actually expanded from the one on TV. It gets more and more rich each time you watch:


Bud Light Dude - Watch more free videos




2. A friend of mine just put me onto Andrew Peterson's music - www.andrew-peterson.com. He's folky and a colorful song writer. He can be a little "over the top" in his artsy-ness. All around very good. How about these for some strong lyrics to begin a Christmas song:
"It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town"

That song also includes these fantastic lyrics:
"Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon"

That is good, good stuff.

Current Likes/Dislikes

Lists seem to be popular in media these days. So I'm in:

Elements of Life I Am Currently Enjoying:

1. B's insistence on calling the great fish in all the Jonah story books "a dolphin." I don't know why, but this is funny to me every time.

2. J had to give his preschool class a "tip" yesterday, his tip: "Don't stand up on top of the car."

3. Found a pretzel place near our house that cranks out fresh hot pretzels starting at 6am. Unbelievable.

4. Donna Reed in "It's a Wonderful Life"

5. Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life"

6. "Southbound Train" by Jon Foreman

7. I knew it:


8. The 76ers are really bad, but they have some young players who might turn into real NBA players.

9. My living room lit with Christmas lights.

10. Getting to listen to Sunday Morning Over Easy streaming over the internet on Sunday mornings from the finest radio station, 92.9WBOS in Boston.

11. Seeing some old China friends.

12. The knockoff NPR skit on SNL with Alec Baldwin. As with B and "the dolphin", Pete Schwedy and his balls are funny every time.



Elements of Life I'm Not Enjoying So Much:

1. No college football for a few weeks, except for the D-IAA and D-II championships, which I watched like they were the superbowl.

2. "Southbound Train" by Jon Foreman

3.

4. The fact that I haven't read a book for a couple of months.

5. Not getting to see more old China friends.


And there you have it. I'm sure more lists of likes and dislikes will surface in the days to come.

I feel the need, the need for extremes

Why must we move to the edges? In politics, entertainment, sports, and religion the tendency to label something/someone "all good" or "all bad" is obvious. The ability to discern something as both good AND bad (to use simple terms) is not often observed. I read an article a while back about how one of the original "hater" blogs - gawker - built an empire on labeling the world of NYC in extreme terms. It happens as well in the Christian community: emerging church is ALL bad, calvinists are ALL crazy, proclamation evangelism is COMPLETELY modern, and the list goes on.

I've seen it in the response to "The Golden Compass." The movie is ALL bad (if you're a religious type) or it is ALL good and harmless (if you are secular and want to rebut the religious nuts).

So what I am saying is that everyone should just calm down and become like me and see the world as I see it. Then everything will be ok and peace and justice will be restored....if I were king...

Look Kids, A Deer!

In the family tradition of the Griswolds, we got us a Christmas tree last night. Here are two equally true versions of the experience, one traditional and the other modern/urban.

TRADITIONAL: There was a light snow flurry in the air as we rolled off to the Christmas tree lot. We stopped to pick up some egg nog, and listened to the radio station that plays only Christmas music during December. The boys played with the pine branches that were laying around and we also purchased some small evergreen bushes to plant in our window boxes.

MODERN/URBAN: There was a light snow flurry in the air as we rolled off to the Christmas tree lot. We stopped at the light next to the railroad tracks, where the homeless guy keeps all his stuff. He looked cold. We sang "The Hannukah Song" by Adam Sandler, which was playing on the radio station that plays only Christmas music during the month of December. We searched for a nice tree under the pink glow cast by the neon lights of the neighboring strip club.

Merry Christmas season everyone. When I go home today, I'll be greeted by the great seasonal smell of the nice 8 foot tree in my living room. Until then, drink you gin and tonic-ahs and smoke your marijuani-cah: