Month: December 2009 Page 2 of 3

Not a Fluke

On December 16, 2009

I stopped by Lov a Da Coffee to meet someone the other day and sat in a comfy chair near a speaker. As I worked and waited, my attention was captured by the music that was being played. The arrangements were classy and the singer’s voice was captivatingly pure and beautiful. She sang fascinating arrangements of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” and of the Monkeys’ “Daydream Believer”.

When she began to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables” my curiosity began to form a hypothesis, later proved correct. This was Susan Boyle. The frumpy, homely, Susan Boyle from “Britain’s Got Talent” and YouTube fame. The Susan Boyle whose singing silenced an auditorium full of mockers. If you are one of the three people in the world who have NOT seen her performance on YouTube, you must.

Her dream was to be a singer, and as unlikely as that dream might have appeared at one time, it is no longer. Her album I Dreamed A Dream is now available for download or purchase.

I know that much of the quality of this music is attributable to quality arrangements. But she handles those arrangements so well. How could she have remained in such obscurity for so long?

Later that night, I stopped by a friend’s house to take care of some things, and he had some music playing in the background. It reminded me so much of what I had heard earlier in the day that I plopped down at his computer to bring up the Amazon link to play some Susan Boyle samples for him.

“That’s good, Randy,” he said. “Sounds a lot like this” and he held up her CD. His wife had bought the CD for him and that is what was playing. No wonder it reminded me of her!

She’s good. In the end, I decided she was not $10.99 good. But she’s good nonetheless.

I watched the video again just to watch the judges’ jaws drop.

Priceless.

Shakespeare Bio?

By Randy

On December 16, 2009

In Books

I need your help. I need someone to recommend to me the best biography of Shakespeare for me to read.

My degree from Michigan State University is in English Education, a degree which, sadly, required me to read absolutely NO Shakespeare.

Currently I’m reading a bio of Billy Strayhorn. Raise your hand if you have ANY idea who Billy Strayhorn was. Anyone? That’s what I thought. That’s why God invented Wikipedia and Google!

Strayhorn did not have the benefit of a college education, but did not need that to come to knew enough Shakespeare to quote him and to write a jazz suite around Shakespeare’s works, performed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra at an early Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Admittedly, Strayhorn was a genius. But this non-genius former English teacher turned pastor would like to patch some holes in his education.

So, I repeat, anyone have any recommendations of a really good bio of Shakespeare?

Bacon

By Randy

On December 15, 2009

In Uncategorized

I am known in my family and to a few close friends as the guy who was sick one day, and bored, and in order to pass the time took his temperature every hour and charted its variations in Excel.

So, to those, the following will come as no surprise.

Bacon, you might notice, is much smaller when it is cooked than when you pull it from the package. But how much smaller?

To find out, I cooked 8 ounces (227 grams) of Publix regular bacon on a hanging rack in the microwave, which does not leave the bacon in its own grease as it cooks. I weighed the entire apparatus when it went into the microwave (408 grams) and the whole when it was done cooking (296 grams). I assumed that the difference between those two weights would be accounted for by water in the bacon that had turned to steam and dissipated (112 grams). I then weighed the bacon itself after cooking (47 grams).

Yes, one starts with 227 grams of bacon, but only 47 grams of it ever gets eaten.

Putting it all together, we are left with these facts. Out of every pound of bacon you buy at the store:

* 49% will evaporate
* 30% will stay in the pan
* 21% will make it to your plate.

More graphically, if the package of bacon is ten inches long, you can mentally chop off eight inches and toss it away. You only eat two inches.

Hmmm. I think I’ll be buying less bacon.

[Of course, every “scientific endeavor” is subject to peer review. Though this is hardly scientific, and though I don’t imagine there is anyone out there as obsessive about these things as I, I would be interested to hear if there are!]

E-Prime

By Randy

On December 15, 2009

In Uncategorized

I’ve tried, but can’t come close to matching this work of word-smithing: writing a whole column without depending upon any form of the verb ‘to be’. I read this years ago, and was referred to it again recently. It is classic.

[I tried to think of an economical way of expressing the sentiment of those last three words in e-Prime, and could not do it. Who can help me? Anyone?]

Family and Prayer

By Randy

On December 13, 2009

In Family, Prayer

The exhortations made here are not uncommon:

“My friend, if you are not able to leave your children a legacy in the form of money or goods, do not worry about that. And do not wear yourself to death either physically or spiritually in order to accumulate a great deal of property for your children; but see to it, night and day, that you pray for them. Then you will leave them a great legacy of answers to prayer, which will follow them all the days of their life. Then you may calmly and with a good conscience depart from them, even though you may not leave them a great deal of material wealth.”

What makes this quote uncommon is the context in which the author sets it, a context I find adds the encouragement to persevere that the mere exhortation lacks:

“Our family has been a believing and praying family for three generations. The elders have prayed faithfully for their descendants. During my whole life I have walked in the prayers of my parents and forbears and in the answers to these prayers. A quiet rain [of answers to prayer] drips steadily down upon me. I reap, in truth, what others have sown.”

(quotes taken from O. Hallesby, Prayer.)

Free ‘Holiday’ Music

By Randy

On December 10, 2009

In Uncategorized

ITunes is giving a way a CD sampler of 20 ‘holiday’ songs absolutely free. I resisted Amazon’s offer of 99 tracks for $5, but this one I had to go for. Obviously, when someone else is choosing the tracks, there will be winners and losers. In the latter category I’d put Rascal Flatts singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”. But Sarah Mclachlan’s rendition of “Silent Night” is a very beautiful thing and, we might add, worth more than the price of the collection! And Weezer doing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, well, you have to hear it. There is some good and interesting stuff here. Christmas music stuff.

UPDATE: Okay, so now I’ve heard the whole thing, there may be no more than two or three you will listen to a second time, but hey, it’s free!

ADD and the Pointless Christmas Tree

By Randy

On December 9, 2009

In Life

I sat across the desk – the monstrous, authoritative, imposing desk – from the doctor who had just run a battery of does-he-have-ADD tests on my then 15 year-old son. “Yes, your son shows classic symptoms of ADD,” he said to my wife and I, and then he looked me in the eye, and asked, “Mr. Greenwald, were you ever diagnosed with having ADD?”

The answer is technically ‘no’. These days when I do happen to admit to being ‘borderline ADD’ my wife sweetly can be heard saying, “Borderline?”

I’ve coped all these years with whatever peculiar ways of processing I possess and so a diagnosis, formal or informal, doesn’t really mean much. I’ve never really felt impelled to delve deeply into how this might effect the way I function.

But then there was the incident of the Christmas tree.

A week or so ago, I walked into a large tent at a local Lowes with the intention of buying a tree to bring home for the family to decorate. I was able to navigate to the stack of trees labeled ‘7-8 feet’ without any problem. But then the problems started.

There were probably fifty trees to choose from. Then there were, it seemed 100. Then 1000. How could I choose the one perfect tree from that pile of 83,000 trees? The prospect of making a choice seemed so daunting and mentally overwhelming that I couldn’t handle it. I had to get out of that tent, which I did clutching the first tree I laid eyes on.

I can’t say that was ADD. I don’t know what it was. All I know is that the prospect of making a distinction among so many subtly different objects overwhelmed my poor little brain.

We ended up with a pointless tree. That is, there was no ‘point’ at the top on which to mount our tree-topping ornament. This was easily fixed with a piece of gray PVC pipe and a couple zip-strips. You can’t tell that our tree, like this post, lacks a point.

So, I’m satisfied. But next year Barb, not I, enters the evil tent.

Inside – Outside “Jokes”

By Randy

On December 8, 2009

In Politics

Three times I have had someone direct my attention to a bumper sticker/T-shirt which has, apparently, become quite the rage among politically conservative Christians. It says “Pray for Obama.” So far so good. But this legitimate concern is linked with a bible verse, Psalm 109:8, and thereby subverted and made despicable.

The Christians who have pointed this out to me, thoughtful men both of them, thought it was funny. The verse referenced reads, in part, “may another take his office.” It was, to them, a clever way of saying, “I wish we had a different president.” It was not a happy thing for me to correct them.

The problem is that they were ignoring the other part of the verse: “May his days be few.”

It is this portion of the verse that leaps out and is deeply offensive to others. To their ears, it is a call for Obama’s death. And I have to say I think THEY in this case are reading it correctly. Taken as a whole, it is offensive.

Let me assume the best, that these were produced as a joke (like ‘baseball’ being mentioned in Genesis 1, “In the big inning…”).

The problem is that that which may be funny when told inside a closed culture may not appear as funny when broadcast outside that culture. To take the inside jokes outside without considering how insensitive they will sound to those not on the inside is very, very careless. It is not loving to those we are called to serve, and it is damaging, further damaging, to the very testimony of love and grace that we believe is integral to the Christian message.

We need to learn to hear with ‘alien ears’ and therefore speak with more gracious lips. And that requires constant repentance and repeated draughts from the fountain of God’s grace.

In the meantime, ditch the bumper stickers and burn the t-shirts. Please.

The Blind Side

By Randy

On December 8, 2009

In Books, Movies

A couple of Christmases ago, HPC associate pastor Geoff Henderson gave me Michael Lewis’ book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game which I read with interest, knowing nothing of the book’s human subject, Michael Oher, and nothing about its technical subject, the importance of an offensive left tackle to a right handed quarterback. I watch both with greater interest now.

But I never imagined the book would be turned into a movie, much less a movie starring Sandra Bullock, and even less of a movie starring Sandra Bullock in which she is receiving kudos for her acting. (Trailer here.)

I’ve not yet seen the movie, but I will.

Here is the fascinating thing for me. Ordinarily, a movie is released to much fanfare and to blockbuster receipts, and then plummets to more average takes. Occasionally, a movie opens to average receipts and then increases its take in subsequent weeks.

New Moon, for example, dropped 70% in the second week, and an additional 63% in the third. In contrast a movie like The Sixth Sense opened strong, and then for three weeks decreased only minimally, and then began to increase its take.

What explains the difference is word of mouth. A movie which generates the kind of ‘you have to go see this movie’ kind of conversation will begin to attract new people weeks after its initial release. And that is the kind of film that I think must be worth seeing. A couple of other movies which followed this pattern that come to mind are O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Little Miss Sunshine.

Add to that list The Blind Side. Released the same weekend as New Moon, it increased its second week take by 18%, and though it fell by 49% the third week, a traditionally poor week for movies, it still maintained enough oomph to surpass other movies for the top spot in the weekend draw.

All that to say that people are talking and saying that this is not only one good story, but a well done movie as well. I’m not expecting it to be in the category of great, but it sounds like one to see.

[Stats are from Box Office Mojo.]

On The Road Again

By Randy

On December 7, 2009

In Books, Movies

For fans of Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road, recently made into a film, this interview for the Wall Street Journal will be of interest.

Some extracts here:

I have a great sympathy for the spiritual view of life, and I think that it’s meaningful. But am I a spiritual person? I would like to be.

I have the same letter from about six different people. One from Australia, one from Germany, one from England, but they all said the same thing. They said, “I started reading your book after dinner and I finished it 3:45 the next morning, and I got up and went upstairs and I got my kids up and I just sat there in the bed and held them.”

There’s not much you can do to try to make a child into something that he’s not. But whatever he is, you can sure destroy it.

[Link courtesy of Bruce Kirby.}