Epic 2015

If you have about 10 minutes, you should check out this short film on albinoblacksheep called Epic 2015. Basically, it's a somewhat entertaining, a little unsettling view of what could happen very shortly with technology currently available through amazon.com, google and blogging. It contains the humorous sentence "and Googlezon.com was launched." That sounds funny. Check it out.

Where has all the worship gone?

Go here for a great article about the state of worship music today. Penny for your thoughts.

Only in NY

Nuff said.

West Village

So tonight I officially begin my bachelor week in the city. Jen & the girls are already back in MA, so I'm on my own. Now normally when Jen's out of town, I don't do too well. Or at least I don't too much. I generally eat garbage (popcorn as an appetizer with ice cream as the main course), I don't sleep too well and the housekeeping spirals out of control. Oh yeah and I have this habit of watching poorly-acted-exact-same-plotline-low-budget movies on Lifetime. But I'm detetmined to do something with my last 10 days in Manhattan.


So with no real plan, I headed down to the west village tonight. Washington Square Park. Wow. Within 10 seconds of entering the park, I had one person offer to hustle me in chess and someone else offer me a dimebag. At the foot of 5th Avenue, this park is the meeting place of NYU students, homeless drifters, artists, musicians of every ilk, savvy tourists and just about every other eccentic you can imagine. It is New York in exaggerated, almost caricature form. Beautiful Europeans videotape a guy washing his clothes in the fountain. A shmarmy, athletic white guitar player accompanies a couple of black drifters singing Very Superstitious. One drifts away, the guitar riffs on and the lyrics morph into an improvisation about getting ready to go to church. Two brothers play catch under the famous arch where Harry dropped off Sally among so many other movie moments. Up 5th Ave through the arch, the Empire State Building is illuminated all white.


I felt like I could just sit there for 3 hours and be satisfied with the experience, but I also wanted to see more of the village so I wandered around--art galleries, gay bars, vintage shops--a hodgepodge of the highly hip. The Village is different from the rest of the city as the grid doesn't hold rein down there and streets intersect at crazy angles in a way that feels more Boston than New York.


So in my wanderings, I found myself not far from the river. Should have figured this but Hudson River Park is offering Sunset on the Hudson--a free concert series on Friday nights. Saw a guy there named David Ippolito. He was pretty good. Did a combo platter of covers and his own stuff. But more than the music was the fantastic vibe. Can't imagine much of a better atmosphere than sitting on perfect grass with bare feet listening to acoustic music sitting on a peninsula/pier as the sun sets over the Hudson on a warm summer night. People even humored him and sang along--The Beatles' Revolution, Shower the People You Love With Love. It's just a really fun way to spend the evening.

Definitely better than popcorn, ice cream, and the jealous husband returns to take revenge on...oh forget it, you know how it ends.

Napoleon Bagpiper

So this guy (who looks an awful lot like Napoleon Dynamite) was playing in the subway station near our place. I was listening for a while before I realized he was playing There is a Redeemer by Keith Green. I thought that was pretty cool. Plus, it's not every day you see a bagpiper who is like 14 feet tall playing in a subway station.

NONSEQUITIR -- Lowered Expectations

Click on this Nonsequitir comic to enlarge it. I thought it was pretty funny.

Click your BACK button when you're done if you want to return to the blog.

Bride or jilted ex-girlfriend?

I've been thinking a lot about people that I know who have left the church. It strikes me that the church as a body doesn't do well in relationships with people who have left the fellowship. So it raises a question for me:

If the church is supposed to be the Bride of Christ, why does she act so much like a jilted ex-girlfriend when someone leaves?

Fight Club

I just watched Fight Club for the first time in a long time. This isn’t going to make any sense, but the fact that it’s one of my favorite movies is really not a recommendation to watch the film. It’s pretty dark and I don’t really think it’s good for your soul, but the message is conveyed very eloquently if not always in a positive way. One of the quotes that resonated with me, perhaps because we are confronted with all of our possessions going into cardboard boxes and totes right now is this:

“What you own ends up owning you.”

How true it is, that we make decisions based on our possessions sometimes to the detriment of interpersonal relationships, our relationship with God, our giving to those truly in need. I might have felt poor wandering around the wealth of SoHo the other day, but let’s face it, all of us who find ourselves members of middle class America are insanely wealthy in comparison to most of the world. If we have the time and capacity to blog or read blogs, we're probably not worried about our next meal. So for what it’s worth, a thought for the day from your pal Tyler Durden.