Monthly Archives: November 2007

jenga in a minivan?

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This has to be one of the least thought out commercials in television history (I realize it’s in Spanish, but I couldn’t find the English version on YouTube). Seriously though, the kids are playing jenga in the back of a moving minivan; does that seem foolish to anyone else? It would be hard to play jenga on the kitchen table in my apartment if the ceiling fan was on high. Jenga requires a stable playing surface, and those little wooden pieces are sensitive. Yet somehow, the brilliant people at Chrysler thought this was a good idea for a commercial. I don’t know all the steps involved in making a commercial, but I would assume that the concept was originally presented at a meeting, and it probably wasn’t the only idea presented, meaning it was picked over other ideas. What were the other ideas, a group of guys driving home from the bar while playing darts in the back of a Town & Country? I can only hope it’s some sort of joke, since otherwise it would mean that out of the however many Chrysler employees who approved this idea, not one of them realized how redonkulous it would be for kids to play jenga in a minivan. Perhaps in support of the theory that this commercial is some kind of joke that didn’t work out — something like, the ride in our new Town & Country is so smooth you could play jenga in the back — is another new Chrysler commercial I found on YouTube.

links of interest

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I’m passing on links to a few interesting articles I read today.

  • “Cold and Flu Myths” (MSN): like an episode of MythBusters, this article disproves several well-known myths about common illnesses. For instance; flu vaccines do not cause the flu, colds aren’t caused by going outside without a coat, and you should feed a cold AND a fever.
  • “Us? Happy? You betcha!” (Star Tribune)*: an article on the front page of the strib about a recent study ranking each state by how happy its residents are (rankings are based on depression and suicide rates). Which state has the happiest people? According to this study it’s…South Dakota? Equally as suprising, NoDak was ranked number 9 (I have no idea how that happened…have you been to those two states? They are awful!). Also in the Top 10, Minnesota was ranked the sixth happiest state and Iowa (my other “home” state) was fourth. Trailing its fellow MidWest states, Wisconsin came in at number 30 (although I assume the study was done during the past two NFL seasons when the Packers were losing…if it was done again this year, I would predict Wisconsin would crack the Top 5!). *FYI: you may need a startribune.com membership to view the article. Membership is free, you just have to give an email address to signup. They don’t send much spam and it’s worth it because you get access to all their online content (which is basically everything from the print-version of the newspaper).

confessions of an email addict

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Hi, my name is Andy and I’m addicted to email. I check my email at least 5 times a day, probably more some days, depending on where I’m at and if they have free wireless. I have 3 “main” email accounts, 2-3 “secondary/junk” accounts (which I only check once every couple days), plus the inbox for my facebook and myspace pages; add it all up and the amount of time I spend simply checking all my emails (not even reading or writing messages) is getting out of control. My “problem” has become more noticeable lately as I’m trying to be a productive student and finish the semester strong. I have a lot of work to do before I can really enjoy the Christmas season and working on school stuff often takes a backseat to other-much less important things; I’m actually proud/embarrassed to admit that sometimes I find myself checking email or reading articles online while sitting in class (I hope none of my professors are reading this, although I doubt I have them confused since it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not paying attention to their lecture). I’ve come to realize that grad school is pretty much all writing (papers and projects) – at least it is in my experience as a seminary student – there are very few tests…in fact, this is end of my third semester (plus one J-term) and when I buy new books after Christmas I will have only taken one real test (you know, the kind you take in a classroom after the professor comes in and asks everyone put away all their study materials and all you hear for the next two hours is the sound of furious writing – the joyful release of knowledge before it’s forgotten – and an occasional sniffle, since students are always sick around finals, especially in December when it’s cold outside and people haven’t been getting much sleep).

The thinking seems to go something like this… when you’re studying for a test you’d rather be writing a paper, but when you’re writing a paper you’d rather be studying for a test. Continue reading →

Learning about sports from a 2½-year old

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Bill Simmons (aka “Sports Guy”) is one of my favorite sportswriters (he writes for espn.com and ESPN The Magazine). I enjoy reading the Sports Guy because he weaves together his thoughts and theories as a sports fan with commentary on his favorite expressions from popular culture (for instance, Simmons often references shows like “The Hills” and “Real World,” which happen to be a few of my favorites); and he does all of this in a way that I find hilariously insightful. His wife (aka “Sports Gal”) occasionally contributes her humorous thoughts about life, culture and sports into his columns, and last year she was hired by ABC to write a weekly column in response to each episode of The Bachelor (the season with Andy the Navy doctor) and her commentary was nothing short of brilliant (at least that is the opinion shared by me, my sisters and the other participants in our “Bachelor Pool” – think NCAA tournament brackets, except instead of picking which teams will win, we picked which girls would NOT get a rose each week – by the way, I won in a landslide and I still haven’t seen the prize money, I should talk to my sister about that). Anyway, if you are not familiar with the Sports Guy, I think his latest article is a good intro to his writing personality (some might use writing “style,” but I think his writing has a complete personality). In the article – which is taken from the Dec. 3 issue of ESPN The Magazine – Simmons discusses a few joys of parenthood and tells a story about bringing his 2½-year old daughter (aka, ummm…Sports Daughter?) to her first NBA game. I’ll give a short preview from the article below, but you’ll have to skip over to espn.com to read the rest…

Now, here’s where my demented genius comes in: I think that kids can be brainwashed to believe anything is fun as long as you seem excited about it. You could say to your child right now, “You know what we’re doing later? We’re heading to the yard to watch grass grow!” And if you sell it well enough, they’ll be counting the minutes until the back door opens. Seriously. So when I asked my half-asleep daughter if she wanted to watch basketball in Daddy’s bed, I made it sound more fun than mashing bananas with The Wiggles. In retrospect, I probably didn’t need to sell it so hard. She was so happy to get called up to the majors (Mommy and Daddy’s bed) and maybe get her head rubbed, too. But that’s how she was introduced to basketball: I brainwashed her, lied to her and wore her down.

Fast-forward to the Nov. 11 Cavs-Clips game. When I asked if she wanted to go, I presented the offer as if I were suggesting we fly in a helicopter to eat M&M’s on the moon. And I sold LeBron as a combination of Santa, Elmo and our UPS guy. After a few YouTube clips, she was hooked, screaming at her mom, ” We’re gonna go see LeBron!” Her excitement only amplified over the next few days. Meanwhile, I started to worry because 150 minutes is a long time to keep a child entertained. Could she make it through the third quarter? Could she even make it to halftime?

Finding my way back to church

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One of my friends from college is currently working on her PhD (she’s wicked smart!) and every once in a while she sends emails about articles that she has read (and that she thinks others might find interesting). Last week she sent a link to a talk given by Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The talk is titled Finding my way back to church — and getting kicked out: The struggle over what it means to be Christian today and it was presented to the Methodist Federation for Social Action (probably sometime in 2006). I’m posting an abbreviated version of the talk and want to note that due to my edits, the version below does not follow all the main themes from the talk (all the text is directly quoted, all I did was take sections out in a way that I hoped would not change or confuse any of Jensen’s thoughts/ideas). If you would like to read the talk in its entirety, the title above is a link to the full version. The sections I chose to focus on deal with his personal struggles with faith & belief and the ways the Church has helped/hindered him wrestle with his questions and doubts. I do not know anything about Jensen beyond this article, so I am not endorsing him or anything else he has written, but I think he raises some good questions/issues in this talk and shares opinions about the church that are worth reading, thinking about and discussing. If you have anything to say in response, I hope you will leave a comment for me and others to read.

This past year, after decades of steadfastly avoiding churches of all kinds, I returned to church…I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but my early experience with church had been life-threatening: I was bored, nearly to death…

Whatever one thinks about theology, church is a place where people go to think about essential questions: What does it mean to be human? What are our obligations to other people and the non-human world? How do we create meaning in a world that appears to be playing a cosmic joke on us…

I think about those questions a lot. I ponder them in the abstract, and I struggle with the very concrete implications of them in a world saturated in so much suffering. I am always looking for help in that pondering and struggling, which is what led me to a new church…

I described myself as “a Christian, sort of. A secular Christian. A Christian atheist, perhaps. But, in a deep sense, I would argue, a real Christian.”

After talking to people about what I believe, they quickly realize I’m not a dogmatic atheist, the kind who takes pleasure in ridiculing religion or faith…So, people ask me, why don’t I call myself an agnostic or a seeker or a doubter or something that conveys more openness? Am I really so sure God doesn’t exist in the traditional form? How can I be so sure?

I can’t be sure, of course. It’s impossible to prove the non-existence of God. In that sense, I’m an agnostic, just as I’m an agnostic on the question of whether or not my life is controlled by tiny magic elves who live in my desk drawer at work. I can’t prove that I’m not under the influence of those alleged elves, and hence I can’t really be an atheist on the question. But what really counts is not what I can or can’t prove, but how I live. Do I go about my day as if elves are running the show? Do I sneak a peak into my drawer now and then to try to catch them plotting? Do I ever offer prayers to the elves to which I think they will respond? No, I don’t. In philosophical terms, I’m agnostic on the question. In practical terms, I live like an atheist, on the assumption they don’t exist.

In that sense, most people in this culture, no matter what their stated beliefs about God, live like atheists… Continue reading →

Issues (aka think about it)

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Following the theme of passing on names and previews of some of my favorite comedians, I give you Flight of the Conchords–New Zealand’s 4th most popular gangster folk group. FOTC has begun gaining popularity in America over the last few years, thanks mostly to an HBO comedy special in 2005 (and thousands of youtube views of performances from that special) and their HBO series this past year (2007). Flight of the Conchords (the television series) was “loosely” based on Bret and Jemaine’s lives as Kiwi rap/rock/folk stars trying to make it as musicians in America while living in New York City (the show was funny and I was happy to learn that it got picked up for a second season that will air in 2008). Warning: although this clip is fairly PG, the comedy special and their show were on HBO, so not all of the content is as tame (it’s not very bad, but just so know).

(I’m taking my “salutation” out of yesterday’s post–not that any of you actually read yesterday’s entry yesterday–and tagging it onto the end of this one).

Happy Thanksgiving! (I hope you watch the Packers beat the Lions before you take your after-Turkey nap.)

trendspotting: social networking

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Note:  I can no longer find this video on youtube and the one I originally used was taken off…sorry (February 27, 2008).

Before Demetri Martin received my vote for the funniest comedian in America–assuming Dave Chappelle is retired–he was the goofy “trendspotting” guy on the Daily Show (for those of you who don’t watch the Daily Show–perhaps because you prefer receiving your news from what some people might consider “legitimate” sources–trendspotting is a series of humorous and somewhat informative segments about current cultural trends). The video above first broadcast on the Daily Show back in February of 2006 and is about online social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook; because both Myspace and Facebook have grown exponentially over the last year or so, the segment is already a bit outdated – for instance, the reference to Friendster, which is another online social community that—although it may have started the whole craze—is now basically non-existent due to the incredible popularity of Myspace (110 million users) and Facebook (47 million users) [1]. I am fascinated by many aspects of the Facebook/Myspace phenomenon, so you can count on seeing posts in the future about the many different ways I see online communities influencing how people in my generation see themselves and interact with each other [2]. Newsweek has included a few articles about the differences between Facebook and Myspace over the past months and there was even a story on the CBS Evening News this past Monday on sites like Facebook (I haven’t watched it yet, but it’s still on my DVR); but for now, I thought this short video would be a great not-so-serious introduction to the topic and to the work of Demetri Martin [3].

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[1] Statistics from a Newsweek online article (November 20, 2007).

[2] I spent two weeks at a Bible camp in Wisconsin this past summer interviewing college-aged counselors to study how they make meaning amidst the influences of things like Facebook, reality TV, People magazine and other pop-culture creations. I have not had time to complete the study yet, but you can count on hearing more about it when it is finished. Right now it is called the Meaning Project: Faith & Facebook.

[3] If you like Demetri’s style of comedy, check Comedy Central’s schedule for a rerun or search youtube for last year’s comedy special “Demetri Martin. Person.” It’s a good one; very funny stuff.

realization through Conversations

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I went to the Sara Groves CD release concert tonight. Sara is one of my favorite artists and she happens to be from Minneapolis. It was a great show. She played songs from her new album (“Tell Me What You Know”) and plenty of great songs from her past albums, she also told stories from the last few years of her life (including the recent birth of her daughter and a life-changing trip to Rwanda, both of which have influenced her music). Something I have always appreciated and found refreshing about Sara’s music is its raw honesty about life and faith, and although I have seen her in concert before and have been a fan of her music for several years, while singing along with her songs tonight (either in my head or out loud) I found myself hearing the lyrics for the first time (you’d think I would have heard them before if I had them memorized, right?). I have heard people talk about separating the words from the music, but I never thought that I did this. I realized tonight that I had been missing out on some great stuff in the music of one of my favorite artists. The song that helped me realize this is called “Conversations”; here are the lyrics that I had somehow never heard…

“I would like to share with you what makes me complete. I don’t claim to have found the Truth, but I know it has found me. The only thing that isn’t meaningless to me is Jesus Christ and the way he set me free. This is all that I have. This is all that I am.”

How could I have missed this? I wonder what else I haven’t been hearing in the music I listen to. I get so caught up in things that I think are important. I look at what I have and think one of two things, either I have it all or I need more. In either extreme – depending on when I last bought the new “it” thing – I have ascribed meaning to things that are actually quite meaningless (shoes, iPods, cars –> the older I get, the more expensive they become). I have wasted too much of my life claiming to have found the truth or at least knowing where to find it (and it usually has a price tag attached). I like to think that I am complete, but tonight, while sitting in one of the back rows at a concert, I heard someone sing about what makes her complete, and the Truth of her words found me and helped me realized (once again) that the only thing that isn’t meaningless to me—the only thing that makes me complete—is Jesus Christ and the way his death set me free. This really is all that I have. It’s all that I am, and if I am really honest, it is all that I need (I don’t actually need any of that other stuff, I just really want it and I trick myself into believing it will somehow make my life more meaningful). I would like to thank Sara Groves for her beautiful words that I have been singing for years but finally heard (for the first time) tonight. I think it’s probably like this with God and us most of the time; it may seem like we hear what God is trying to say and often we can even repeat back the lines that we have memorized (prayers, creeds, Bible verses), but we still haven’t heard what God is really saying. I am not sure how it happens or what we can do to ensure that we hear God (and to be honest, I don’t actually believe we do anything, God pretty much does it all), but I think our best option is to open ourselves up to God’s Word and trust that it will find us (and then pray that we will have ears to hear it).

God’s Will

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The devotional reading below was sent to me by a girl I was dating while living in North Carolina during the summer of 2001 (between my sophomore and junior years of college). The girl  lived 1200 miles away (in Iowa) and she is now married — so things obviously didn’t work out; she actually married the guy she started dating shortly after we broke up, which is something I have been lucky enough to help several of my ex-girlfriends prepare for — but I’m thankful for the experience and that she sent me this reading. I ended up talking to her a few years ago (it was a nice conversation) and got a chance to thank her for sending this poem to me because — although she originally sent it to help us accept and deal with the distance between us that summer — it has become a reading that has helped me (and others who I have shared it with) through several difficult and confusing times. It comes from a book of daily meditation readings published by Hazelden (the drug and alcohol addiction treatment center based in Minnesota) and although it is intended for people dealing with issues of addiction and codependency, it’s good stuff for anyone, no matter what issues they have (lets be honest, we all have issues). The book is called The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie. I’ve found that this reading makes more sense to me every time I read it. Depending on what’s going on in my life at the time I read it differently and it helps me in different ways. I recommend reading it more than once and allowing its truth to slowly sink in and transform (and even challenge) the ways you think about your life and how God’s will seems to be happening in and around you; with your help or despite you.

“God’s Will” by Melody Beattie

God’s will most often happens in spite of us, not because of us.
We may try to second guess what God has in mind for us,
looking, searching, hyper vigilant to seek God’s will as
though it were buried treasure, hidden beyond our reach.
If we find it, we win the prize. But if we’re not careful, we
miss out.
That’s not how it works.
We may believe that we have to walk on eggshells, saying,
thinking, and feeling the right thing, while forcing ourselves
somehow to be in the right place at the right time to find God’s
will. But that’s not true.
God’s will for us is not hidden like a buried treasure. We do
not have to control or force it. We do not have to walk on
Eggshells in order to have it happen.
It is right there inside and around us. It is happening, right now.
Sometimes, it is quiet and uneventful and includes the daily
disciplines of responsibility and learning to take care of ourselves.
Sometimes, it is healing us when we’re in circumstances that
trigger old grieving and unfinished business.
Sometimes, it is grand.
We do have a part. We have responsibilities, including caring
for ourselves. But we do not have to control God’s will for us.
We are being taken care of. We are protected. And the Power
caring for and protecting us loves us very much.
If it is a quiet day, trust the stillness. If it is a day of action, trust the activity. If it is time to wait, trust the pause. If it is time to receive that which we have been waiting for, trust that it will happen clearly and with power, and receive the gift in joy.