NBA Slam Dunk Finals 2006

As many of you know, I'm a big basketball fan. But I don't have TNT, so I wasn't able to watch this year's NBA All-Star Game, which is okay, because I DO have ESPN, so I could watch the highlights and save myself roughly 3 hours.

But I didn't get to see the highlights of the Slam Dunk Championship. Now I know what you're thinking. "The Slam Dunk Championship? Wasn't that old like, 10 years ago?"

I mean, when the past winners are folks like Kenny "Sky" Walker and Harold "Baby Jordan" Minor, well, let's just say it's slim pickings. But this year's dunks were astounding, especially when considering the winner was 5'9" Nate Robinson. But Andre Iguodala's dunk from behind the backboard is the kind of thing that makes a person shout out obscenities to no one in particular.

Check it out, but if you're in an office environment, tell folks ahead of time you're studying the engineering techniques of beavers because folks, words will slip out.

Showtime!

Funniest Home Video Ever

My buddy Jonathan sent me this link as a reminder about why people have kids - mainly because they do things that are so irresistibly cute that it sends you into convulsions.

The following home video is an example. I laughed my butt off, not because the video is so professionally done but because of the idea of it all. It's simply hiliarious.

Click here to see it.

Poking Fun at the Vice-President

I don't mean to be mean here - and I understand tha the Vice President is probably feeling pretty awful about shooting his hunting campanion, but since nobody was really hurt in the accident, it's probably appropriate to make a few jokes. So here is a compiliation of some of the late night talk show jokes that are going around.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Television talk shows took aim Monday at Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental weekend shooting in Texas of a hunting companion. Here are a few of the jokes.

"Late Show with David Letterman," CBS

• "Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It's Dick Cheney."

• "But here is the sad part -- before the trip Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy's request for body armor."

• "We can't get Bin Laden, but we nailed a 78-year-old attorney."

• "The guy who got gunned down, he is a Republican lawyer and a big Republican donor and fortunately the buck shot was deflected by wads of laundered cash. So he's fine. He took a little in the wallet."

"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," NBC

"Although it is beautiful here in California, the weather back East has been atrocious. There was so much snow in Washington, D.C., Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fat guy thinking it was a polar bear."

• "That's the big story over the weekend. ... Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter, a 78-year-old lawyer. In fact, when people found out he shot a lawyer, his popularity is now at 92 percent."

• "I think Cheney is starting to lose it. After he shot the guy he screamed, 'Anyone else want to call domestic wire tapping illegal?' "

• "Dick Cheney is capitalizing on this for Valentine's Day. It's the new Dick Cheney cologne. It's called Duck!"

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Comedy Central

•The show's segment titles included "Cheney's Got a Gun," "No. 2 With a Bullet" and "Dead-Eye Dick."

• "Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt ... making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, (was) shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."

• "Now, this story certainly has its humorous aspects. ... But it also raises a serious issue, one which I feel very strongly about. ... Moms, dads, if you're watching right now, I can't emphasize this enough: Do not let your kids go on hunting trips with the vice president. I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land, or energy regulations they're trying to get lifted -- it's just not worth it."

"Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," CBS

• "He is a lawyer and he got shot in the face. But he's a lawyer, he can use his other face. He'll be all right."
"You can understand why this lawyer fellow let his guard down, because if you're out hunting with a politician, you think, 'If I'm going to get it, it's going to be in the back.' "

• "The big scandal apparently is that they didn't release the news for 18 hours. I don't think that's a scandal at all. I'm quite pleased about that. Finally there's a secret the vice president's office can keep."

• "Apparently the reason they didn't release the information right away is they said we had to get the facts right. That's never stopped them in the past."

Curious George

My wife bought some Cinnamon Life cereal at Safeway the other day because it was on sale. Anyway, it had a cute drawing from the new Curious George movie and I was looking at it and I was getting really amped. Justus kind of reminds me of Curious George, mainly because he's kind of bald and he's always climbing and moving and looking into things. I suppose all little kids are like that, but he's really at that stage where if he hears you in the other room, he'll crawl down the hall to see what you're doing. It's super cute. So, I went online to try to find the Curious George collector's series of books, and tried to see if they had any plush toys of the cute little guy yet.

Then I realized, "I am shopping for a Curious George doll."

I think God must do miracles. I am a 29-year-old, fully grown adult male. Okay, I'm 30. I'm a 30-year old, fully grown adult male. I spend my spare time reading books on theology. I have academic interests and pursuits. And I really, really want to play lego blocks and read all the Curious George books to my son. Pray that Barney will never tempt me.

Phone Call to School Office

For those of you who are teachers, this is pretty funny.

Click here to hear

Another Amazing Poem

Speaking of realism, check out the language of this powerful poem about growing up in the Vietnam War era. Whew.

Shooting Rats at Bibb County Dump
David Bottoms

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.

Shot in the head, they jump only once, lie still
like dead beer cans.
Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow
into garbage, hide in old truck tires,
rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,
or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light
toward the darkness at the edge of the dump.

It's the light they believe kills.
We drink and load again, let them crawl
for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for.

Church vs. Movies: An Unfair Comparison But One I'm Going to Make Anyway

Nine years ago, I sat in a darkened movie theatre in SoHo in New York City, watching a pre-release of a movie that would not only win a few Oscars, but would launch the career of two major Hollywood leading men. I was working for Sony/Columbia Tri-Star Pictures as an intern at the time, which means I got a lot of early passes to movies. Most of them, like "Starship Troopers" and "Seven Years in Tibet" were not good films. But this one was different.

I saw this film with about 30 other people and discovered, with them, what I think is one of the best movies of the last decade. The movie was "Good Will Hunting." As I came out of that movie, and began walking up 5th avenue toward my tiny rented room, I realized I had just seen a great - not a good, but a great - movie. And I was depressed. I was depressed, mainly because these two guys were not only way better looking than I was, but had created a screenplay by themselves that would go on to win an Oscar. I used to fancy myself something of an aspiring writer, so you can see how that might depress me. I remember thinking to myself, "I will never be able to say anything that beautiful or deep. I just don't have that in me."

Then, this morning, I read the list of pictures who are up for Best Film. It's an interesting list. They're all, as film critics would say, "experiments in realism." Their topics are the stuff of the headlines.
• Racism and Race Relations - Crash
• Middle East politics and Terrorism - Munich
• The death penalty - Capote
• Gay unions - Brokeback Mountain
• Media trust - Good Night, and Good Luck

I was reading an article today that said that there is a trend in modern movies toward realism.

"People want more honesty and authenticity," adds John Michalczyk, director of the film studies program at Boston College. "Twenty years ago, if you made a biopic it was a canonization of values. Now you have to make it balanced and honest."

New generations of moviegoers were raised on reality television - and their very own hand-held cameras, says Chad Hartigan, box office analyst for Reelsource.com. "People want things that remind them of their own lives and tell them about other people's real lives," he says.

This attraction to the "real" is not only evident in the subject matter - biopics such as "Capote" and "Good Night, and Good Luck" - but also technique. "Munich" and "Crash" use hand-held cameras and natural lighting, as well as improvised dialogue and character development - all techniques drawn from the documentary world and used by feature filmmakers to heighten a sense of immediacy and realism.

This is interesting to me. Seems to me that hyper-realism is a symptom that people these days just want to experience something. Anything. Just something. Anything real. That's the good news, I guess, that people are hungry for what's real. The bad news is they're looking for it at the movies.

I was listening to Erwin McManus the other day, and he asked this question that I think is worth asking. He said, "Why is it that the most stirring, most memorable, most inspiring moments for most people happen in a dark movie theatre?"

I think McManus is dead on - and I think that's a disgrace. I think the most stirring, most soul-wrenching, most soul-lifting moments of life should be found in church. It doesn't have to be a grand production, but it should grip you. I guess that's my passion. I am passionate about the local church being at least as inspiring as a movie theatre. And that maybe not every week, but at least a few times a year, people should walk out of the doors of their church and say, "Man, that impacted me and I'll remember that for a long time."

The hope of the world isn't movies. It's the church. And if that isn't a place for massive inspiration (thereby leading to massive life change), then I'm not sure it's doing it's job. Not many movies have the ability or capacity to actually make the world a better place. Not many movies have impacted me in that way. But the church - the church! Church should be like that. Church should make you a better person. Church services should make the world a better place. Church services should be 10 times better than a movie. 100 times! Movies are like a nine-volt but church -church!- the church has the Living God of the Universe, who has unlimited amperage and voltage.

So I guess I really am praying for more people to get hit by lightning in church. After all, in the words of Francis Shaefer, "When you come into contact with a lightning bolt, you're going to be different."