Moonshot Wiffle Ball Bats

I just found the first item for my Christmas list...

Moonshot Wiffle Ball Bats

Anne Rice leaves Christianity

Anne Rice leaves Christianity – The Marquee Blog - CNN.com Blogs

Anne Rice still believes in Jesus - she says that her faith in Christ is central to her life. She says she can no longer belong to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous group."

Sign Me Up

This would make such an impression at the poker table...

Colonel Whiskey Tortoise

The 100 Cheesiest Movie Quotes of All Time

Education for Christian Living

Nice Cover

kris oliver - A Satisfied Mind

kris oliver - A Satisfied Mind

How to estimate church attendence

How to estimate church attendence: "It's a complex thing to measure church attendance but here are a few pointers on arriving at an accurate number based on the attendance figures they give you.



- 50% if its a Pentecostal worship service because they count the legs and forget to divide by two.



- 30% if its a Baptist church because they count members on the roll and not all of them are still living.


+ 10 if its a Vineyard service because those rugs on the floor were actually people!

+ 20% if it's a fundamentalist church because they don't count the people they didn't want there.

- 30% if it's an Anglican/Presbyterian/Methodist church because the number they gave you is from their huge Easter service.



+ 15% if it's an ethnic/non-western service because all those people coming late missed the counting.



- 10% if its a megachurch because the worship team and welcome team got counted during all 5 services.



- 520% if its a Catholic church because they count the parish, not the church attendance.



+ 20% if it's an emergent service because those having a smoke outside were not counted.



- 25 % if its a Reformed church service because they count the people who SHOULD have been there.



- 15% if it's a house church because the neighborhood kids playing video games in the back room somehow managed to get counted with everyone else. So did the guy delivering pizza.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

"

How can we make your stay more enjoyable?

Here's a comment card from the hotel we stayed at during our vacation last month.

Chloe filled it out.

As you can see, she felt quite good about the hotel. Nothing but accolades and praise. Such a glowing response to the first question would suggest a customer at the height of contentment describing a perfect stay that wanted for nothing.

That is, until this 7-year-old reaches the second question. Where, I imagine, the light dawns oh so gloriously on the myriad possibilities that come with such an open-ended and generous inquiry.

Empowerment sets in at the mere thought of "What else can we do?" Well, why couldn’t that porter put her on the luggage cart and give her a ride up and down the elevator every time she enters the lobby.

Apparently, this sense of entitlement extends to the card’s final query, which she ignores, opting instead to continue her answer from the previous and potentially far more lucrative question.

Sweet Dreams are Made of Seven Nation Army

Sweet Dreams are Made of Seven Nation Army sound bite Mash up sound bites

The grandiose genius of Metallica

Over the past two weeks, I've been rediscovering the collaboration that happened 10 years ago between Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony. Was captured on the S&M album.

The first 12 minutes of it are absolutely epic and include an Ennio Morricone opener. The whole affair is thundering and massive. Curiously, several pieces on the double album remind me of a James Bond theme.

And while the brilliant collaboration seems odd, a study last year suggests both heavy metal and classical fans are united by a shared 'love of the grandiose'.

Metallica is playing Dallas in two weeks (Sept 29). Anyone up for an evening of grandiosity?

shemp

Kind of blue

While enduring a wait on the tarmac and deprived of “all electronic devices”, I reached for the American Way magazine. On page 42, I encountered this disturbing image.

Let’s temporarily suspend the discomfort that comes with looking at a shirtless man born in 1940. The old man, bare-chested thing induces flashbacks of Jacques Cousteau’s leathery, gray haired and considerably less taut chest on display aboard the Calypso. Hey, at least M. Cousteau’s shirtlessness was part of his job.

As opposed to the practice of this so-called Dr. Lite, which I would assume includes a doctor’s smock to cover up his well-defined, if not occasionally oiled pecs. (Given the old man's guns, I'll grant you that smock might be sleeveless.) Whatever. My doctor’s office won’t even let me in the door without a shirt or shoes.

Anyway, thanks to a ubiquitous ad campaign in the sports sections of metro newspapers, I’ve seen more of this guy’s improbably sculpted body than I’d care to.

And I certainly didn’t need to see what’s beneath that chest. Cartilage, bones and some sort of atomic blue fluid coursing through his aging veins. What the?! All before the morning beverage service, too. This primitive coach passenger in 22F can’t make heads or tails of this X-ray vision ad. Maybe the point is that the secret of Dr. Lite and Cenegenics resides in blue kneecaps. Or perhaps its that if I’m experiencing sudden blueness in my skeletal extremeties, I should call Dr. Lite.

Too confusing. I’ll just schedule an appointment if I experience hair loss.

This Will Get Your Day Going...

The "Iron Man" influence

My parents are moving from the Huntington Beach house this week. Heading to Texas after 35 years in that house. The house I grew up in. So I’ve been thinking and writing about it. A lot. Thanks for indulging me on this one.

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During my recent – and final – visit to the house last month, I went for an early and sentimental Sunday morning run to the beach. Trotting up Hamilton Boulevard next to my high school, I spotted an open gate to the campus. Enticed, I took a slight detour and serpentined my way through the aging, empty place. Memories from those four years of the 20th century came flooding back – in various shades of clarity.

None was more vivid than the one evoked when spotting the school cafeteria, a curious place I remember more for assemblies than for meals.

One of those gatherings was to hear a guest speaker: a DJ from one of the LA FM album rock stations. He wasn’t a celebrity, in the broad cultural sense. But as a naïve, rock-loving teen, my sense was neither broad nor cultural. In these simpler times, FM radio ruled. So for me and the other couple hundred high-schoolers crowded into this room our honorary guest was just this side of royalty.

I mean, this guy made a living spinning records, probably (in my mind, anyway) bringing home righteous bucks and Hollywood starlets. All for dropping a needle on some Zeppelin and Aerosmith while occasionally offering his somnolent observations and the hourly station ID. He had it made. And here he was, seated with a microphone at the lunch table of honor in the Edison High School cafeteria.

We offered our rapt attention to this special guest as he stumbled through his, shall we say, loosely prepared remarks. Then he took some hard-hitting questions from the fawning audience. “Who’s your favorite band?” “Have you ever met Van Halen?” “Do you get to wear headphones at work?”

Then someone asked about the challenges of the job. In between sips from white Styrofoam of what I assume was stale industrial coffee – surely a futile defense against the morning’s hangover and overly fluorescent cafeteria – he rambled a bit on how vital it is to select music appropriate for certain parts of the day.

He then leaned into the mic on the table and uttered the line that, for reasons unknown to me, is the one and only line I remember from four years of high school.

“I mean, you wouldn’t want to play ‘Iron Man’ at 7 in the morning, man.”

Decades later, huffing my way out the school gate and toward the beach and along the sand and back to my soon-to-be former home, I consider all the classes, lectures, practices, instruction . . . all the teachers, coaches, monitors, crosswalk guards and that one graduation speaker I encountered during my lackluster high school career.

Total recall: One sentence.

I’m left to wonder why I couldn’t have remembered something a bit more constructive. And whether or not I heard (and subsequently forgot) a sentence or two that could have paid rich dividends for me later in life, or at least helped to avoid some pain. “Buy coastal real estate now.” “Invest in Apple Computers.” “When you have kids, don’t take them to Six Flags on the final Sunday of Holiday in the Park. The lines are terrible.”

But the real revelation for me was this:
I think The Line had a significant impact on my life.

To wit: After high school, I elected to study Radio/TV in college and volunteered to be music director of the campus radio station so I could, among other things, select music appropriate for certain parts of the day (and play some Ramones).

Then, after rejecting my first (and only) post-college job offer as a DJ – a less-than-tempting four-figure salary to spin records during the weekend graveyard shift in the border town of Laredo – I still chose a career path I thought would impress high school kids if I ever came back to speak. It occurs to me the Edison career counselor might have told me this shouldn’t be a top factor in choosing a career path . . . (if only I’d remembered that counsel).

There might be lessons to be learned here.

Like to teach my kids to discern and listen for (and remember!) the important stuff.

Or to choose words carefully, because you never know who will remember what you say. I’m fairly certain the DJ didn’t intend for The Line to play a defining role in the life of at least one impressionable high school kid at the cafeteria.

Of course, the biggest lesson I take from this is, no matter the circumstances . . . never, never, ever play “Iron Man” before breakfast.

Un-Easy Rider

Take a long road trip with someone and, invariably, you begin to pick up on their habits. And, if the road trip is long enough, those habits will grate on you until you pray for swift and sudden deliverance.

Riding the same train every day is kind of like that.

I see the same people every morning. It's like a station wagon filled with total strangers, a carpool experiment that sometimes goes awry.

Among the 14 or so in the last car on the 8.40 southbound, the least popular rider among us is, hands down, the guy who enjoys talking loudly on his phone in some agitated Middle Eastern dialect. Sometimes I close my eyes and am magically transported to a boutique bazaar where I am being subjected to high pressure sales tactics to purchase either a rug or a waffle iron.

Then there's this guy who, for the duration of the trip, triumphantly holds his iPhone at eye level for all to see. I'm not sure if this is health-related (i.e. his neck prohibits him from the traditional head-down mobile position) or if it's a brazen exercise of conspicuous iPhone consumption. "Hey, everyone, I'm playing PacMan!"

No doubt my train actions drive someone on board a little nuts, too. But, hey, if these people can't deal with a little fingernail clipping and electric shaving, I say get off the train!

It Beckons...

IMG_4151, originally uploaded by koliver.

Hate It or Love It?

Enjoy This Little Ditty from Matt and Kim

Father's Day: The New #1

While in the bliss of my Father’s Day massage at Nordstrom yesterday afternoon, I had a minor revelation.

That Father’s Day has edged out the birthday on my personal list of important dates.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love the birthday, the cake and associated pageantry.

Yet it slipped to second in the rankings of days for which I am uniquely qualified to be honored.

The current rankings:
1. Father’s Day
2. Birthday
3. Wedding Anniversary
4. Labor Day (the day off here gives it the edge)
5. Valentine’s Day

This is a massive move for Father’s Day. All my life I’d viewed the day as a Hallmark fabrication, a quasi-Title IX maneuver to level the field severely tilted by the wildly popular Mother’s Day.

But my perception changed yesterday. There are a few reasons that come to mind and account for this day rocketing up the charts to the top spot.

1. Father’s Day is a shared experience.

This year I took more pleasure than usual in both extending and receiving Father’s Day wishes to and from total strangers. For a day, we were connected by a fraternity of fatherhood. I also found great joy in exchanging wishes with dear friends whose parenting skills I respect – and whose children I know and admire. And, of course, the privilege of exchanging wishes with my own dad, with whom I relate to more with each passing year. Contrast that to the birthday experience which can feel a bit solitary – although I do share a birthday with my mother and Johnny Bench.

2. Father’s Day and the U.S. Open. Absolute genius.

3. Father’s Day honors some degree of achievement (noting here the distinction between fathering a child and being a father). Technically speaking, the birthday simply recognizes another year of survival on this planet.

4. For Father’s Day, a silly song is not obligatorily directed at you by co-workers or restaurant personnel.

5. Father’s Day is a collective and societal celebration of values, priorities and family.

6. And that family of mine gave me some really thoughtful and cool gifts – including the massage.

7. Numerically speaking, it’ll be a few more years before my birthday gets interesting. Plus, Father’s Day feels more novel (only had 10 of those).

8. Your chance of getting an unfunny, off-color card and/or novelty gift for Father's Day is significantly less than on your birthday.

9. I ignored work this Father’s Day weekend. Instead, I swam with my kids, sat with my family and watched the beautifully touching and affirming Up, and, from my third base coaching box, waved my son home for his first home run of the season.

Maybe I’m late to this Father’s Day party. A co-worker told me he’s always ranked Father’s Day higher. But for me, this was the year I got it. The year the rankings shifted.

Of course, it’s only mid-June. Come September, Labor Day could come on strong . . .