Crazy Train Nine Year Old

Emily and Kaylee have been singing Crazy Train since they were two years old. I thought that was kind of unique, but apparently this is something of a childhood anthem. On several occasions, guests in our home have asked Kaylee and Emily who their favourite musician is. I'll never get enough of the horrified looks on the questioners faces when my sweet little girls holler "Ozzy!" at the top of their lungs.

A Curveball in Your Brain.

This is an amazing, interactive optical illusion that illustrates how a curveball fools a batter.

Pirates and Patriots for Jesus?!

I'm starting to wonder if AmeriChristianity is some narcotic-induced, collective consciousness trip. It can't be real. This is amazingly, insanely disturbing-funny-weird:

Witness Uncle-Sam-For-Jesus pay tribute to his deceased pal Captian-Hook-For-Jesus. Cuz you know, between raping, pilaging and murdering, everyone knows pirates had revival meetings:


When I think of the mystical man who claimed to be God, living amid the poor, confounding the religious elite, the first metaphor that comes to mind is "That's just like pirates! And nationalist, military-recruitment personalities!

If you're strong (or crazy) enough to press through to the middle of this seemingly endless clip, you might hear reference to the "confession canon (please, don't blow my head off - I'll convert!) and "believing bear" (Oh, the sweet, sweet joy of being mauled by a wild animal with Jesus in his heart).

PS: The horrific content above is all ripped from http://baikinange.blogspot.com/2009/03/pirates-for-jesus.html - credit is due for the intrepid bad-music hunting done on this blog.

Emily and Kaylee Visit Hoth

I dragged out my old (25 years!) Robotix building toys for Emily and Kaylee to play with. With a little help they made some great vehicles and robots and began to spontaneously reenact Star Wars scenes. Here's their Hoth battle scene:

Best. Sermon. Ever.

This ranting baby is producing more intellectually solid content than several other fundamentalist sermons I've heard delivered in the same style.

Teenager Annoyance Frequency

This is the only evidence I have that I'm still young. Everything else in the universe is singing the siren-song of geezerdom to me:

Created by Train Horns

Best. Public. Service. Ad. Ever.

Star Wars Retold

I think I like this better than the actual Start Wars orginal trilogy. I have to go wiped the laughter tears out of my eyes now:

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Dun-dun-dun-du-du-dun-du-du-dun

Despite my church-culture-aversion, I'm a sacramentalist at heart. Though it's oft-attempted but rarely realized, but there's still something transcendent about sacramental acts and liturgical forms. At their best, they allow us to connect with God in a way that can't be captured in words alone.

But there's a fine line between the majesty of God and simply reveling in our own pomposity. People (like me) who (occasionally) dress in vestments are in real need of a good dose of humility and humour. With this in mind, I am grateful and thoroughly entertained by the guy in this video who snuck into the annual Icelandic Lutheran Church procession of the clergy:

Best. Mashup. Ever.

The Secret Lives of Chickens

If only the peace-keeping chickens had been called in before the US invaded Iraq.

Vente Does Not Mean Large

In light of the Starbuck's church video a couple of posts ago, I feel obligated to embed this short clip:

Finding the Key Without Using It.

This was our "confessional" last night during our home-group's worship time:

Unforgiven - Metallica

Make of it what you will. There are many compelling images here.

What grabs me is:
The lyrical description of a deeply hurt individual trapped in his anger, knowing the key is forgiveness, but refusing (or being unable) to move beyond "I dub thee unforgiven."
&
The images of a person living their entire life in a darkened cell, scrapping the wall to escape when the key and the door have been there all along.

Capturing Church Culture Crap

This is a great depiction of the surface-level aspects of the nebulous "Church culture" concept we talk about from time to time in the King's Bridge community. Church culture is something we've attempted to deconstruct, and then, for the most part, reject.


Sadly, the church consulting organization that created the video really seems to embody a lot of the deeper-level church culture crap I find frustrating: church growth focus (#s rather than relationship), western-capitalist success models, come-to-us orientation (rather than releasing the church out into the community-at-large), lack-of-social-justice concern and a buy-our-book ad to top it off. They're focussed on re-branding but I personally think the "product" itself needs a top-to-bottom redesign. In fact, it may need to become a completely different "product" (I shudder every time I type the word "product" to describe the church.).

I think the choice of Starbucks as the subject of the analogy really says it all. I rarely enter a Starbucks, and when I do I feel a little dirty. But the analogy works because it assumes that Starbucks is a great embodiment of user-friendliness, cultural approachability and personal belonging. Of course, for many people it is all of these things. But not for homeless people, eco-hippies, someone who doesn't want to fight for a comfy-seat or people who don't know how to pronounce "vente."

I guess when it comes down to it, I think the church should be subverting many aspects of the culture at large. In my charismatic fundamentalist past, this meant being counter-cultural ... which really just meant replacing mainstream entertainment with cheesy, sanitized Christian equivalents. That was a miserable failure. Subversion goes a lot deeper than this: It means embracing popular cultural icons and engaging the deeper areas of western corruption using it's own language. It means embracing the culture-at-large in many ways, and embracing people-at-large in even more ways. It means infecting the culture, spreading through it, growing organically without central-control and allowing transformation to happen from the inside out. It means recognizing that Christianity as a movement has survived and thrived for two thousand years, but no single institutional embodiment of it has (no - not even the Catholic church - but that's another day's argument).

Whew ... all I meant to do was post this little video, not spew a rant.

Thus endeth the rant.

MUST. FISH. NOW.

Finally, someone has solved the universal problem of the spontaneous need to fish.

Whassup?! Best. Political. Ad. Ever.

Most people, whether they be alive, dead or fictional, are vaguely aware of Budwieser's "Whassup" commercial and it's various spin offs. But this has got to be the best one ever! (For the very old, young, forgetful and/or Amish among you, I've included the original Whassup and one of many home-brew spin offs below - watch them before you watch the new one posted first below):

New Whassup Political Ad:


Original Whassup:


Superfriends Whassup:

Margins & Memories

I have a tendency to stick my head behind the curtains in the middle of the show.

As I sit here in the middle of the warm, gentle humidity, green growth and ocean roll of downtown Honolulu I notice the dirty margins. It's very Disney-ish here: The people cleaning, building, working and especially those who are suffering are swept behind the buildings and under the concrete. But I still notice them ... I look for them. In, fact, I am one of them, and so are you. When we're near the tourist destinations of our hometowns, we're often someone else's backdrop to a perfect holiday; Our disheveldness actively interfering with their illusion of perfection and peace.

My eyeballs tend to drift down the alleyways and under the rugs to the place where people are marginalized. I often meet Jesus there (the real deal ... not the dude who managed my pizza experience [see below]). But, today I think I saw him somewhere else. I sat here on my little hotel balcony, and I stuck my neck out and saw a little swath of beach. There were people kicking their shoes off. Flash bulbs were glittering. waves were bobbing bald heads up and down. Hands were being held. And people were stopping, and staring, and letting go, if only for a moment, of their anxieties and arguments.

And as I observed this, it occurred to me that I was witnessing happy memories-in-the-making. I was sitting in the back row of the theatre of some strangers mind's eye. The images I could see at a distance were destined to be the full-screen, high-definition highlights of someone else's life: "Remember that trip to Hawaii back in '08."

I've long known that beauty dwells in the margins: The tear in the corner of the eye of the homeless old man I stop to talk to. The moment of laughter enjoyed with the mentally ill friend whose anxious voices quiet for long enough to let a smile out. The young street-urchin who pulls-his-crap-together a little and stands taller, buoyed by a first taste of self respect.

The quiet prayer of someone whose hardness drops off as their chin is lifted by the finger of Christ.

But this morning, it was my hardness that dropped off. It was my Disney-fueled cynicism that cracked as I saw that real, enduring beauty is not limited to the margins. It dwells on the wide boulevards as well. Some perfect-tourist moments are real too. Sure, many are plastic and part of an endless cycle of consumer longings that are never satisfied. But others are as solid as the concrete alleys I expect to find beauty in. And even the most superficial holiday memories are only plastic on the exterior ... when the shrink wrap is peeled off of them by an older, wiser tourist looking back on their perfect memories, there will be deeper beauty waiting to be discovered underneath.

The enfleshed-God who had "no place to lay his head" also filled the wine jugs to enhance some else's perfect wedding memory.

Beauty can not be limited, it spills out and surprises. All the forces of culture and consumerism can neither dominate nor sully it.

It is everywhere.

Is KFC Managed by Buddha?

Yes it's a real label, from a real pizza, delivered to my house.
Yes, I know it's probably just some mere mortal with a name pronounced "Hey-Seus."

But if "Jesus is a friend of mine," why wouldn't he manage my pizza experience?

Mmm Jesus Pizza.

80+ Year Old Ladies Sing "God Save the Queen"

The previous clip created a rift in the fabric of the universe that can only be repaired by re-balancing the forces of cheese. So to that end I'm posting these freakin' awesome Femme-geezers rasping out a Sex Pistol's song that was originally banned from airplay by the BBC (in the 70s).

Jesus is My Friend

This is the most horrifically wonderful live music performance in the history of the world. I want to stop watching and listening, but I can't look away.



"He is like a Mountie. He always gets his man. And he'll zap you any way he can."