Year: 2015

Random

Queue Are Est

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Let’s talk tea.

Not hot tea — you and Captain Picard can keep your Earl Grey. I’m talking tea the way God originally gave it to Adam and Eve — ice cold, strong, and unsweetened. (If I want to drink a thousand useless calories I’ll do the only reasonable thing and have a Coke.)

This post isn’t about how to make ice tea yourself, but if you want to do that, it couldn’t be simpler. Get a gallon container, put three quarts of hot tap water in it, throw in three large Lipton Cold Brew tea bags, and leave it for a couple of hours.

Bible Study / Spiritual Journey

You Don’t Always Get What You Want

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Twelve Years Prior

Her name was Rachel, and she was perfect. How could anything that small and helpless and beautiful not be perfect? So what if she wasn’t a boy? If someone offered him ten sons at this moment, he would turn them all down. Because she was perfect.

Her name was Yael, and she was annoyed. Her time was supposed to have been finished five days ago, but she was still bleeding. She had gone past before, but never this long. She wasn’t concerned, but she was certainly getting tired of the extra laundry.

Movies

Movies You Can’t Refuse, Part II

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This is Part II of our journey through nine decades of film, choosing one movie from each that any student of film should see; Part I is here.

70’s

You know which one this is going to be, it’s the one that sparked this conversation. The Godfather was Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of a bestselling pulp novel. The backstory on the making of the movie is almost as interesting as the movie itself.

But only “almost,” because the movie itself, as I wrote elsewhere, rivals Kane as the peak of American filmmaking. There had been “gangster” movies before, but Godfather changed everything – it portrayed people with depth, with emotion and families and idiosyncrasies, and it did so in a story that was almost operatic.

Movies

Movies You Can’t Refuse, Part 1

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A friend of mine, Dan, is a movie critic, with his own web site and everything. Imagine my surprise (and consternation) when last week he posted that he had just watched The Godfather for the first time. At least one person told him that was un-American (if McCarthy were alive he’d have been arrested), and while that is slightly (but only slightly) hyperbolic, it’s certainly a situation far less than ideal.

Dan’s reply was that they don’t ask what you’ve seen or haven’t seen before they give you a press pass. Yes, and that and the lack of Bluebell and the clown car that is Trump for President are a huge part of what’s wrong with this country.

Bible Study

The One Where…

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Last Thursday and Friday was the annual Global Leadership Summit put on by Willowcreek. This is my sixteenth time to attend, and it’s still two of my favorite days of the year. In honor of GLS, let’s talk about … well, let’s just talk and maybe we’ll see at the end what we talked about.

Today we’re going to look at a couple of episodes in the life of a man named Peter. Or Simon. Or Cephas. He had a lot of names (he wasn’t in witness protection as far as we know), but we’ll call him Peter from here on out.

Movies

Both Sides Now1

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My wife and I have been working our way through a several-year-old TV show on Netflix, the place where old TV shows go to die. This particular show titles all of it’s episodes “The <something> Job,” and last night was “The Rashomon Job”. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Oooh, the Rashomon job.

Her: What’s Rashomon?

Me: Oh my. Honey, I have clearly failed you. Akira Kurosawa?

Her: Who?

Me: Oh my.