Desperate Priests

What do you get when you cross a decent TV show like Joan of Arcadia with Desperate Housewives? Well, you get a train wreck of a show called The Book of Daniel featuring a desperate, mealy-mouthed, pill-popping Episcopal priest named Daniel Webster and a cast of characters who are no doubt one of the most despicable assemblages of sad sacks to ever disgrace the airwaves. I know that life is hard, that Christians are far from perfect and I like a little “edge” as much as the next guy, but this one went tumbling over the cliff like a pack of demon-possessed swine.… Read the rest

A Coal Miner’s Son

Dr. Ernie Bowling is a fine optometrist and one of my best friends in the world. He is also a coal miner’s son. Like his father and grandfather before him, Ernie headed to the coal mines after high school probably convinced that he would spend the rest of his life breathing lungfuls of black dust and wandering the dimly-lit, coal-filled catacombs carved deep into the hills of West Virginia and Alabama. He labored in the mines for several years, and once he even spent time serving under the stern and watchful eye of a famous foreman, Homer Hickam, Sr.–father of Homer, Jr.… Read the rest

It’s Ugly…It’s Good!

So which do you think Alabama Crimson Tide place kicker Jamie Christensen would have preferred–a picturesque, high-arching, 60 plus yarder which sailed just inches outside the left upright, or a twisted, ugly-as-sin, 45 yard knuckleball job which squeaked through the left lower 90 by the hair of it’s “chinny chin chin?” Well, duh! For Christensen, his teammates and the longsuffering Bama Nation, the answer is a no-brainer–“ugly is as ugly does!”

Christensen’s winning field goal with 5 seconds left in the 4th quarter gave the Crimson Tide a 13-10 win over the hard-fighting Red Raiders from Texas Tech in Monday’s Cotton Bowl.… Read the rest

The Song That Nobody Knows

Even if you’re like me and your New Year’s Eve revelry consisted merely of watching TV as the ball dropped in Times Square and then promptly hitting the sack, chances are you at least heard “the song that nobody knows.” If you rang in the New Year at a party then perhaps you even sang it–or tried to. You see, most people don’t know the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne , or if they do, they typically have no idea what they’re singing. Often people, in the fashion of a mondegreen, sing something like “old lang’s sign,” or else resort to the “nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah,” that we all fall back on when we forget (or never knew) the lyrics to a song.… Read the rest

Happy 50th Anniversary Mom and Dad!

If my father had lived to see tomorrow, he would have celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary with my mother. His untimely death in 1980 left my mother a fairly young widow, but tomorrow we will celebrate nonetheless–for love transcends all boundaries of time and space, life and death.

My Mom and Dad attended the same high school and both graduated in 1951, but they were only casual acquaintances at the time. In those days, my father was tagged with the ironic nickname “Bonecrusher,” standing as he did at 4’11” his senior year (he grew 7 inches his first year out of school).… Read the rest

Sex in Bedford Falls

Now that I have your attention, I wanted to tell you, in case you haven’t noticed lately, that we have a serious problem with “sex in the city,” and for that matter, in the burbs and backwaters as well. The problem is, we no longer leave anything to the imagination. From peeks under the sheets to prime-time commercials hawking the latest and greatest impotence remedy, it’s all out in the open for curious eyes to see.

The “sexperts” say it’s better to talk about previously taboo topics in cold and clinical terms and to the show sex act in all its technicolor splendor.… Read the rest

Looks Like I’m “It!”

Jason over at Already & Not Yet and Scott at Free Thoughts have “tagged” me in what looks like the opening move of some sort of chain blog, phishing scam. Next thing you know they’ll be offering to send me 100 million dollars like Princess Fayad Bolkiah if I’ll just send them my bank account and social security numbers. Yeah right. Listen boys, I wasn’t born in Alabama, ok?

Oh well, against my better judgement, here goes nothing.… Read the rest

Thoughts on Lessons and Carols

Several of us Church of Christ folks snuck over to the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Huntsville last night for A Festival Service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The Church of the Nativity is one of the oldest churches in Huntsville and has an interesting piece of history attached to it. During the Civil War, the Union Army occupied Huntsville and began commandeering area churches to use as stables for their horses. One Union officer was sent with a detail to Church of the Nativity for that purpose. However, when he saw the words “Reverence My Sanctuary” (still seen today) above the front entrance, he had second thoughts and gave orders to his troops that the church was to remain untouched.… Read the rest

Hare Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Ok, I know how it goes. You have the best of intentions of following through on my suggestion from yesterday and watching It’s a Wonderful Life with your family this Christmas, but your busy holiday, er, I mean Christmas schedule just won’t allow it. Maybe you’ve got miles to travel, last-second shopping to do, or perhaps you’ll be picketing down at the local Wal-Mart or Target with a sign that reads, “Merry Christmas…or else!”

Don’t despair. To the rescue in our fast-food, instant gratification world rides this 30-second short film parody of It’s a Wonderful Life starring the cute, adorable little hares of the world famous 30 Second Bunnies Theatre Troupe.… Read the rest

Merry Christmas You Wonderful Old FBI!

Our Sunday School class has been watching Frank Capra’s classic Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life recently and discussing it in the context of scriptures such as Philippians 2:3 and Psalm 90:17. Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey was indeed a man who “considered others better” than himself and who had the unique opportunity to see what difference the “work of his hands” made in the life and times of the people of the fictional town of Bedford Falls, New York. Like Clarence the Angel, we “like that George Bailey”–how could anyone not, right?

Well, it may surprise you that in 1946 when the movie was first released, the movie was unmercifully panned by critics as “too corny” and promptly flopped at the box office (it was not until PBS began re-broadcasting the movie in the 1970s that it finally got its second wind and became a Christmas classic).… Read the rest

Holy Mondegreens

Mondegreen (noun)–a series of words that result from the mishearing or misinterpretation of a statement or a song lyric, e.g. I led the pigeons to the flag for I pledge allegiance to the flag. —http://dictionary.reference.com/

When I was a child, I sometimes didn’t hear things the way I was supposed to. Of course, this may have been partly due to the heavy ear wax which plagued me back in those days. Like most boys, I had more than my share of the greasy stuff, and every Saturday night my mother would subject me to a weekly ear cleaning. This was performed with a Q-tip moistened with Johnson’s Baby Oil.… Read the rest

Narnia–The Afterglow

It has now been 3 days since I “entered the wardrobe” of Andrew Adamson’s screen adaptation of the C.S. Lewis classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The afterglow lingers, and my right brain is still tingling and my hair a little askew from the wild ride on Aslan’s back. I intentionally waited a while before I attempted any kind of review or analysis–I simply wanted to relish the magic of the moment. Now that my left brain has re-engaged a little, maybe I can finally write down a few of my responses and impressions.

Let me say this up front: my expectations were exceeded.… Read the rest