Category: Spiritual Journey

Books / Spiritual Journey

Reruns

VinceLeave a comment

Tivo has a wonderful thing called a Season Pass. You can record every instance of a show without having to worry about what time it is, what night it’s on, etc. When you set up a season pass for a show, you can decide whether you want only first run shows, first runs and reruns, or all shows. I always choose the first option — who wants to watch reruns?

And yet, I will re-read a good book over and over. I’ve read Les Misérables a half-dozen times, Into Thin Air at least as many, and LOTR too many to count.

Movies / Spiritual Journey

It’s still just once a year, isn’t it?

VinceLeave a comment

It’s February 2nd, Groundhog Day, the day when we have a rodent predicting our weather instead of the usual … well, fill in your own joke here. For the last 20 years, it’s also the day when we watch the movie of the same name. I’ve loved Bill Murray since his original stint on Saturday Night Live (the upgrade from Chevy Chase to Murray was like getting rid of your Kia and buying a Porsche), and Groundhog Day finds Murray at the top of his Murrayness.

What if there was no tomorrow?; there wasn’t one today!

It is a deceptive movie.

Spiritual Journey

Does he or doesn’t he?

Vince1 Comment

My wife and I went to see Les Misérables today, the musical adapted from Victor Hugo’s 19th century novel. It was a new staging, created for the show’s 25th anniversary. The new staging was quite a bit different, in a good way, than the other four times we’ve seen it (I know; I also own five soundtracks). And even if it hadn’t been, as has been said about other things, a bad day at Les Mis is better than a good day anywhere else.

The characters were starker and less “pretty.” Valjean actually looked like a convict who’d been in prison for 20 years.

Spiritual Journey

smto dvciideta agme vere

Vince1 Comment

Everyone knows by now that the iPhone is misnamed — of all the things it is, a phone is the least of them. It’s a calculator, it’s a camera, it’s a level, it’s a photo album, it’s a DVD player (via Netflix), it’s a floor wax AND a desert topping! (That’s right, there once was a time when SNL was funny.)

It’s also a portable game player, enough so that Sony has started attacking it in it’s PSP ads. I never have been much of a game player myself, much to my son-in-law’s chagrin, but last year at Christmas my sister showed me Word Warp, and I was immediately sucked into the Black Hole from Hades.

Spiritual Journey

The Smaller Picture

VinceLeave a comment

A few years ago, my wife and I went to an actual movie theater to see a movie (radical, I know). The movie, based on a short-lived sci-fi TV series from a few years prior, had received rave reviews, so, although we had never seen any of the series, we thought we’d check it out. Coming out of the theater, our collective opinion of the movie was an unqualified…

…meh!

It wasn’t a bad movie, but we certainly didn’t think it was deserving of the praise being heaped upon it. It was just… well, “meh” is the best word I can think of.

Movies / Spiritual Journey

Blind-sided

VinceLeave a comment

In Sandra Bullock’s new movie, The Blind Side, her character Leigh Anne Touhy has a scene where she has just fixed up the guest bedroom for Michael Oher, the 17-year old black young man her family has taken in off the street. There is just a hint of a look of self-satisfaction on her face — she’s doing a “good deed.” As Michael looks around the room, slack-jawed, he says, “I never had one before.”

“A bedroom of your own?” Leigh Anne asks, expecting a “yes,” thus confirming her good deed.

“A bed,” Michael replies, and you see in her face that Leigh Anne’s world has just been turned upside down.