pre and post Easter updates

It has been a while so I figured I'd keep it confined to just what's happened in the past couple of weeks.

Movies I've Watched:
Blades of Glory - not particularly good. Laughed heartily in a few spots but some of the jokes just kind of missed it. The best scenes were definitely the ones where it seemed that Ferrell was just ad libbing. I'm beginning to think that ole Napoleon Dynamite isn't as funny as we all thought.

The Prestige - Excellent. If you like Christopher Nolan's stuff (especially Memento) you'll love this.

Walk the Line - Pretty good. Good acting, good dialogue, cool seeing the development of Johnny Cash as an artist. One of my favorite parts was seeing this two car caravan moving down the highway and realizing that within those cars were Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and June Carter. That is just amazing to think about. Some of the greatest icons of early rock and roll rolling down some backwoods highway in a chevy shooting the breeze on their way to their next gig.

Books:
Fight Club - good read but I have to say that for only about the second or third time in history (Shawshank Redemption being one of them; "Hope Springs Eternal" I think is the name of the short story), the movie is better than the book. Enjoyed the book but the movie took care of some details better, in my opinion. Chuck Palahniuk has definitely progressed as an author since then. Not to say I didn't enjoy it, it was definitely good, and a quick read.

Most of the other stuff is seminary material that I won't comment on until I am done with this semester.

TV:
Only going to comment on one thing here and that's Lost. How are people still not watching this show? How are people still complaining about it? This season has been very strong and it's just not possible or even a good idea for the writers to reveal major secrets in every single episode. I would rather have the mystery extended a little bit. Not knowing why the Others disappeared is great drama. Not knowing if we can trust Juliette is fun. Not knowing why Locke's dad is on the island gives me good fodder to discuss with friends. I love the journey we're on with this show and hope it continues to be as good as it has.

Trips:
Well SORHeads was great. Only three seniors (Max, Philip, Elizabeth L.) and me and Mindy (our resident SORHead female counselor for the past three years), but we had a good time. Weather was cold so the beach wasn't much of an option but we found other ways to entertain ourselves. A few highlights:

1. Panama City Beach has Dippin' Dots stores. Seriously. It's amazing. 40 flavors and they will mix anything up for you. A little piece of heaven.

2. Throwing a Frisbee on the beach when it is 50 outside is still fun. Philip, Max, and I did this several times over the trip and I had forgotten how much fun that is.

3. When doing Bible Study and the conversation lags a bit, nothing quite peps up the discussion like bringing other religions into the mix. First day was a little slow and then we ended up discussing other religions and Christianity's interaction with them for an hour. Good stuff.

So that's about it. I'm back in town now, getting caught up on stuff. Go Gators, nice national championship game, though, like my friend David, I am a little tired of hearing how amazing Oden was. Yup, it was a great game right up until the end when Ohio State lost. Maybe the Gators just had a great game plan and defended everyone else well. And, though the refs may not have thought so, when your small forward drives the lane, fakes a shot, and dishes to another player, it is not okay for a defender to jump to block the fake shot and land on said small forward's back. That is what we like to call, a foul.

Now I've got my whiny Gator comment out of the way. Talk to you later.