OMG!!! Bono’s lookin’ at me!
Review coming…
Click for the full-size shot of the poster
Uno. dos. tres. catorce!
So tomorrow is one of the incredibly rare occasions in which I have a day off, and nothing planned. Therefore, I think I’ll go see a movie, and maybe two.
Right now, I’m definitely wanting to go see Be Kind Rewind, the new Michel Gondry film starring Jack Black and Mos Def. Gondry is without a doubt the most visually imaginative director in the business, so I’m excited about this one. Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it. However, if I decide to go to the 4:50 show of Be Kind Rewind at Downtown West (Knoxville’s arthouse theater), I can go to a 1:40 show of U2 3D at the Pinnacle at Turkey Creek. Now, seriously…a U2 concert in 3D IMAX?!?! Yeah, I gotta check that out. So, I’m gonna try and do both after I grab some lunch (maybe Moe’s, Shane’s Rib Shack, ooh or maybe Bonefish)
Hey, I put some new shoes on and suddenly everything is right…
Okay, no new shoes for me.
But I do have lots of new stuff over there on the sidebar: quotes, twitter tweets, what i’m reading, what i’m listening to, and you can even check out some of my flickr photos…yeahhhh
Say what again!
Pulp Fiction is probably the best movie made in the 90s, and it made Tarantino a household name, no longer to be confused with big spiders. Here are two videos, one an awesome parody of the movie inserting Jim Henson’s Muppet’s heads onto the actors (except, of course, for Eric Stoltz. And also, HT to cavness for this one), and the other making use of typography in the famous “What does Marcellus Wallace look like?!” scene. They’re both pretty awesome.
Enjoy
P.S. - I still maintain that Rowlf would make a way better Jules than Fozzie Bear.
P.S.S - Sorry if this post gave you complete pop culture/hyperlink overload
1 2 3 4 tell me that you love me more…
Valentine’s Day has come and gone. Somehow I missed it. Okay, so I didn’t really miss it, I kind of ignored it. I knew what day it was, what with all the craziness at work, preparing for one of the busiest nights of the year (everyone eats out on Valentine’s Day, and nothing says romance like a Triple Prime Burger), but I tried to zone it out. Another year gone, another year of singleness. This past year, it seems, though, that there’ve been more attempts than ever to hook me up with various women. I find this odd. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting a bit older and people are wondering if maybe I need a little push. Listen, folks, I’m only 21. Give me some room. Give me some time. Geez.
Anyway, I spent Valentine’s Day night at home in pain trying not to lose feeling in my right thumb and index finger. Wednesday I worked 9 to 7 trying to prep up extra stuff for V-Day’s craziness. Thursday I went in at 9 again and at 4:30 was still prepping away…it didn’t look like I’d be going home anytime soon. Until I was trying to open a can of lump crab meat with a really crappy can opener. I cut the tip of my thumb and the inside of my forefinger just above the first knuckle at the SAME TIME. It was crazy. The thumb cut was deeper and bleeding heavier. I asked to be sent home, which they okayed after I assured them I wasn’t going to need stitches (I wasn’t totally sure of that myself, but I thought, you know, power of positive thinking). So I went home, doctored myself up (very hard to do when your two main digits on one hand are out of commission and are what needs doctoring), and sat down to spend many, many…MANY hours at the computer continuing to ignore the holiday. It was kind of depressing, but I survived.
I have a date (kind of a date, kind of a hang out time, whatever, of course I have no idea where I stand) Monday night, so maybe my stars will change. We’ll see.
Don’t hold your breath or your vote until you think you’ve finally found a savior up on Capitol Hill…
I’m still undecided on who I’m going to vote for this year. My sister is completely and totally hardcore for Mike Huckabee, though he likely won’t become the Republican nominee. That will probably be John McCain, whom I honestly would probably rather see in office. I’ve always liked the way McCain carries himself, and he’s a bit of a moderate. I’m incredibly interested in Barack Obama, however, especially with a lot of the things I’ve been reading about him. I agree with him on most of the issues, with the exceptions of gay marriage and abortion, but I’m much more middle-of-the-road on those two subjects than most evangelicals. But some of the comments I see from Obama in this interview, and this transcript of him speaking at Ebenezer Church in Atlanta really encourage me. Obama is definitely not afraid to address the faith issue while still remaining true to the way he approaches the issues. Take for instance what he says here, about abortion:
I don’t know anybody who is pro-abortion. I think it’s very important to start with that premise. I think people recognize what a wrenching, difficult issue it is. I do think that those who diminish the moral elements of the decision aren’t expressing the full reality of it. But what I believe is that women do not make these decisions casually, and that they struggle with it fervently with their pastors, with their spouses, with their doctors.
Our goal should be to make abortion less common, that we should be discouraging unwanted pregnancies, that we should encourage adoption wherever possible. There is a range of ways that we can educate our young people about the sacredness of sex and we should not be promoting the sort of casual activities that end up resulting in so many unwanted pregnancies.
Ultimately, women are in the best position to make a decision at the end of the day about these issues. With significant constraints. For example, I think we can legitimately say — the state can legitimately say — that we are prohibiting late-term abortions as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health. Those provisions that I voted against typically didn’t have those exceptions, which raises profound questions where you might have a mother at great risk. Those are issues that I don’t think the government can unilaterally make a decision about. I think they need to be made in consultation with doctors, they have to be prayed upon, or people have to be consulting their conscience on it. I think we have to keep that decision-making with the person themselves.
But I especially like his response to the “are you a Christian” question:
I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn’t ‘fall out in church’ as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn’t want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.
I don’t know if I’m going to vote for Obama (I do hope he gets the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton, though. That lady just scares me), but I’ll definitely be watching him as we get closer and closer to November.
Raidin’ The Pantry: Beef Florentine Pasta
Even though I cook for a living, I’ve never done it a lot at home (probably because I do it for a living) until recently. I’ve been cooking stuff at home a ton recently, mostly because I realized I was eating ENTIRELY too much fast food, and that I could cook for myself a heck of a lot cheaper. Anyway, I really enjoy reading Scott’s kitchen escapades, so I thought I’d post a bit about mine from time to time. A couple of days ago mom made some Cabbage Beef Soup for a church thing, and there was about a half pound or so, maybe a little more, ground beef left. If it didn’t get cooked today, it was going to have to be thrown out, so I thought I’d go look in the pantry and see what I could work up…this was the result.
Beef Florentine Pasta:
approx. 1/2 lb ground beef
1 box (1 lb) penne pasta
1 package (approx. 10 oz. or so) frozen cut spinach
1 jar Bertolli Alfredo sauce
kosher salt
I thawed the spinach out by taking it out of the bag, and putting it in a colander under cold running water. In five minutes or so, it was thawed out without getting all nasty and smelly. I squeezed as much water as possible out of the spinach and put it in a prep bowl to dry. I boiled a gallon of water with a big handful of kosher salt in a pot, then added the penne. I browned the ground beef, and put the Alfredo in a sauce-pan to warm. Once the beef was brown and the Alfredo was hot I added the beef and the spinach to the alfredo and mixed thoroughly. When the penne was done (approx. 10 minutes to al dente) I poured it out into a colander, then put the pasta back into the pot. Added the beef/Alfredo/spinach mixture to the penne, stirred it up and had some deliciousness.
Here’s the result.
I have some “friends” they don’t know who I am, so I write quotations around the word friends; But I have a couple that have always been there for me
I considered making “and friends are friends forever if the Lord’s the lord of them” the title of this post….but I figured an Avett Brothers quote would be hipper. Wait…more hip? I think it’s hipper. Whatever. Before I write this post, I think it’s important to note that I’ve been reading Chuck Klosterman, which may be what led to the writing style of this post, as well as the possible narcissism that may result. This is supposed to be about my friends, so I hope it doesn’t end up being about me. We’ll see.
So…on to the subject of friends:
My best friend is married. He has now been married approximately one year and one week. It’s still a bit surreal to consider it, and even more surreal when I consider the ever-growing son that is a result of that relationship. Xane is going to be my wingman before we know it. Krusty has been my best friend since middle school. I think that sounds about right. We were 11 or 12….maybe 13. We’ve actually known each other since we could walk, but we were casual acquaintances in our pre-pubescent years, and became best friends one fateful summer when I invited him to go camping with me and my dad. Our lives haven’t been the same since. Most of the summers of our formative years were spent with weekends at each others’ houses playing guitar, swimming, talking about girls, etc. I always fell for girls, girls always fell for him, he would always fall for those girls harder than they fell for him, which would result in some sort of long discussion between me and him about how she was a lame, annoying girl anyway and he needs to move on and after all, he never really loved her anyway, he just loved the idea of loving her. I would then proceed to do the exact thing I rebuked him for doing about some other girl who I loved the idea of loving. He was Derek from the time I met him to the summer of 2002, when he became Krusty during a church fellowship hall painting day. Lesson: If you don’t want to receive a nickname you’re going to keep for the rest of your life, don’t show up to paint a building with product in your hair and nice khaki pants…you will soon be covered in paint and your friends will be pointing and laughing and saying they told you so. We know each other better than most, and could tell many embarrassing stories about each other’s pasts (which is why I’m stopping with the embarrassing stories here, in the event he reads this and begins to walk around town telling everyone he comes into contact with embarrassing stories about me), and it’s still good times to hang out, even if he’s got the wife and kid around (they’re not too bad to hang out with, either). Soon, Krusty and I will have the opportunity to work together in ministry at the church I currently work at. I’m the lead worshiper, and he’ll be the student minister. It’s a crazy thought, the two of us crazy guys working together at a church, but it’s also a very exciting thought.
Another of my best friends is getting married this year. I’m one of the groomsmen. We met at college, and we’ve known each other for almost four years, but from the time we met, we seem to find more and more ways in which we are exactly alike: From which part of the female body turns us to jelly (and no, it’s not one of the glamorous ones you’d have to buy a magazine wrapped in plastic to see), to strange food combinations we enjoy (seriously, Taco Bell cinnamon twists + nacho cheese = deliciousness…if you’re not a wimp, try it and you’ll agree), to which movie’s dialogue we tend to insert into everyday conversation (Orange County, the most underrated movie of the early 00’s). Matt and I are both pop culture sponges, taking in every movie, tv show, book, and album we can get our hands on, often challenging each other’s trivial knowledge. Matt’s also the guy I’m likely to go to when I need an opinion on something. He’s incredibly smart and usually seems to know the right way to approach a situation. Matt and I have spent more than one late night eating whatever turned out to be in his apartment’s cupboard, waxing philosophic on the issues of life, and our own personal situations. We’re both musicians, and we bond over the play of three songs in particular, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” Ben Folds’s “Fred Jones Part Two,” and Dave Barnes’s “Prayers of the Saints.” Matt steals my music on a regular basis, which is okay because I borrow his books and sleep on his couch on a regular basis. We have an arrangement.
I have another friend who has the same first name as me. That would be Joe. He’s a barber. His wife is the only person in the world I know who actually checks this blog so I’m going to try to avoid anything embarrassing about him (wink). Joe is also the tech guy at our church. Now, what this means is that I (the worship leader) have to work with him (the tech guy) on a regular basis. It’s kind of confusing because someone always mentions one of us and then everyone has to try and decipher which Joe they’re referring to. This can happen anywhere from 1 to 11 times on any given Sunday morning. Joe and I also share a neverending, almost sad lust for all things Mac. Neither of us has a MacBook yet, and the first one to get one will likely rub it in the other’s face for months. Joe and I met on a summer camp trip in 2001 that my youth group went to with two other youth groups from our county (I met our church’s pastor on that same trip that same year. At the time, he was a youth pastor at a church that neither Joe nor myself attended. Life is strange isn’t it? On top of that, the following year I met a girl named Crystal at the same camp, who married Joe a few years later. She’s the one who reads this thing. Hi, Crystal. Joe/Crystal, Krusty/Brittany, and myself make up an interesting group of church buddies. And before you ask, yes, this sometimes results in me being the fifth wheel. But Crystal and Brittany are best friends, as are Krusty and myself so Joe (the other one) has to be the fifth wheel too. So I don’t mind.
I have a friend who lives in Nashville, though he’s not a musician. Which is strange, because though I have several musician friends, none of them (I think) live in Nashville. He’s a physical therapist. Well, he’s in school to be a physical therapist. I think he has his license now, but he’s still in school (at Belmont) to get his doctorate. He had a hand in the naming of Krusty. Matt Cabbage (or Chewy as I often call him when in a playful mood) had a huge hand in getting me to really start playing the guitar. When I was a freshman in high school, my dad got a new pastoring job at a church called Buffalo Baptist in Rutledge. My time there had a deeper impact on me than most other times in my life (except for maybe my year as a student at Carson-Newman…more on that later): if it weren’t for the events that occurred in those five years, I definitely wouldn’t be doing the things I’m doing and living the life I’m living right now. Anyway, to Matt (told you, the Chuck Klosterman effect is happening). When we went to Buffalo, I was very excited because it was a church that had a youth group. I’d never been a part of a church with a youth group, and I’d always been the only person my age at the churches we had pastored at (Not always, just from the time I was old enough to care). So I then meet Matt Cabbage, a year older than me and a thousand times cooler than me. He listened to Dave Matthews Band and could play “Jimi Thing” and “Lie In Our Graves.” I had tried to play the guitar a couple of years earlier, taking lessons for a time, but not putting in any real time and giving up completely after a bit. Matt always brought his guitar to youth group stuff on Wednesdays and always played it for a while after the stuff was over. There were a couple of other youth who played as well. I saw them doing this every week, and wanted to be able to play with them, to do what they could do. I asked for an acoustic guitar for my birthday (The guitar I had at the time was an electric, a Fender Stratocaster that I eventually sold for money for college books. To this day I wish I still had that guitar). I got an Ovation Celebrity, and somehow got really good at it. I think it may have had something to do with sitting in my room two hours a day with the guitar. ANYWAY, Matt and I became six string compadres, jamming to Dave or to Caedmon’s Call songs at his house. We even recorded some stuff on his computer. Many inside jokes resulted (”there’s a squirrel outside my window!”), and I pray to God that I still have those recordings somewhere on my computer (I just looked, and I don’t…sad times). I have more inside jokes that involve saying the randomest of things with Matt Cabbage than with anybody on the planet. We could probably create our own language with these inside jokes and nobody would have any idea what we were talking about. He’s been in Nashville for college for a few years now. I miss the kid.
Speaking of college, my roommate for the year I was at Carson-Newman’s name is Andy. I’ve known Andy since high school, but we were just barely casual acquaintances in those days, only bonding over a mutual love of Caedmon’s Call/Derek Webb and New City Cafe. But Andy was instrumental in me ending up at Carson-Newman. I had no idea what I wanted to do for college, where I wanted to go or what I wanted to major in, and two people campaigned for Carson-Newman harder than anyone for anything. As a matter of fact, nobody else tried to get me to go, well, anywhere. My sister graduation from CN in 1998, and Andy was a freshman there when I was trying to make my decision. Over several chai teas at New City Cafe, phone conversations, IM conversations, and other assorted talks, Andy made his pitch to me. It’d be great. We could be roommates. I’d love living in Alumni. I’d go crazy for Howdy Hoot. Yada yada yada. It was all true of course. I decided to go to Carson-Newman, Andy and I moved into Alumni room 207 as roommates, and we had a grand time. Perhaps too grand of a time. Neither of us made it past that year of schooling, both dropping out, and we’re both now working for a living. At any event, that year is the only time of my life that I’ve lived away from the house I grew up in, the house I still live in now. It was an interesting time, a time in which I’ve made some amazing friends, and other than Matt Cheney (the aforementioned soon to be married guy who likes cinnamon twists with nacho cheese), Andy is probably the one who knows me best. We spent many nights not sleeping, instead watching Swingers or trying to come up with top 5 lists of the hot girls we could remember from high school. I don’t see Andy very much anymore, and I’m saddened by that. We’re both pretty busy guys. Andy is also a pretty awesome songwriter, and I don’t think I’ve ever told him that. So Andy, if you read this, you’re a pretty awesome songwriter…there ya go.
There a few more friends I’d like to write about, but this post is already reaching ridiculouslylongland, so I’ll save it for later…until then…
![[caedmonscall.net]](http://rmfo-blogs.com/images/ccneticon.jpg "The official unofficial fan site of Caedmon’s Call.")
![[derekwebb.net]](http://rmfo-blogs.com/images/dwneticon.jpg "The official fan site of Derek Webb.")
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