The Next Step in my DVD Collection's Evolution...

Misteroblivious and I have wasted a lot of air discussing what programs aren't on DVD yet, such as the Adam West Batman series, Get Smart and Max Headroom. But someone at A&E Home Video decided to throw a bone to the geeks and release The Tomorrow People on DVD!

The Tomorrow People was made in Britain between 1973 - 1978, but didn't air in America until the early 1980s on Nickelodeon. (Yes, they had Nickelodeon when I was a kid!) It's about a group of teens who find they have superpowers like being able to read minds, appear and disappear, and levitate things. Like any one of us would do in a similar situation, The Tomorrow People set up a base with a talking computer in an abandoned subway station and confront alien invaders.

This show is for fans of classic Doctor Who. And I mean that in a good way. All the hallmarks of the more well known series are evident in The Tomorrow People -- shot on video, wobbly sets, cliffhangers, low production values, aliens who invade the English countryside, and quarries that double as alien planets. Believe me, if you ever just happened to catch a snippet of the show while channel surfing, you'd expect to see the TARDIS somewhere in the background.

This is one series I never, ever, ever expected to see on DVD in the USA. Heck, I never expected to ever see the show ever again. You can bet I'm saving my pennies now for the release of the boxed set next month -- all 26 episodes of the first two seasons! I can't wait to see how my memory of the show holds up!

The Man-Friendly Church

Look around your chapel on any given Sunday and it becomes quickly apparent that the guys are in the minority. It’s no wonder. Everything about today’s church going experience just screams FABULOUS, from the flower display on the altar to the portraits of a fey Jesus hanging on the wall of every Sunday School room.

Churches have tried a lot of innovative things in the last few years to pack a few more dudes in the pews. Super Bowl Parties, Promise Keepers rallies, and giving away John Maxwell books by the metric ton on Father’s Day were all steps in the right direction. But the church still has a long way for to go before it becomes a serious threat to staying home and mowing the lawn.

I recently gathered data in an exhaustive survey of nearly a dozen men and am now fully qualified to present:

TEN EASY STEPS TO A MAN-FRIENDLY CHURCH

1. Make the fellas feel more at home by dismantling those uncomfortable pews and replacing them with individual La–Z–Boy recliners.
   
   
2. Watch dad’s face light up at the nursery when you toss him a BlackBerry instead of that chintzy plastic childcare pager.
   
   
3. “The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” So along with the bread and wine, consider serving a side of ribs and a baked potato.
   
   
4. Forever ban the part of the service where the pastor says, “Let’s all get up and HUG someone this morning!"
   
   
5. All disagreements in church business can be just as easily settled at the poker table than at a board meeting.
   
   
6. Revise the program of Women’s Ministries Sunday to include ample time for women jumping on trampolines.
   
   
7. PowerPoint slides during worship feature a continuously-updating stock ticker at bottom of screen.
   
   
8. Ditch the coffee fellowship and hold a weekly outdoor pig roast in its place.
   
   
9. Women ushers. Hooters T-Shirts. I don’t think we need to elaborate.
   
   And the number one step to creating a more man-friendly church…
   
   
10. Hold the guys’ attention during the sermon: Swap the tired Biblical analysis with the occasional sports metaphor for sports analysis with an occasional Bible metaphor.

A Pleasant Sunday Afternoon

I went to visit Pleasant Township Elementary School on Sunday afternoon with my mom and N--. It is one of four or five schools in my hometown that will be closing this year due to declining attendance. I had attended elementary school there from 1975 - 1980, and my mother went there as a first-grader way back in 1942! The cliché is true: everything does look smaller! It was nice to walk the halls again after 25 years... It was rather strange to walk in old classrooms and see them changed around -- with computers and everything. You see, the rooms had been perfectly preserved in my memory all these years and it was kind of a shock to walk into my sixth-grade classroom and not see Mr. Holcomb at his desk or to see the library bereft of the paper mache statues that Mr. Bertolini's class made. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind I thought I would see my friends like Mike, Tim, Brian, Shannon, Bobby, Rick and Robbie -- but that was a long time ago. I didn't expect it to be that emotional inside that building... and I realized that perhaps elementary school was the last time I actually felt good to be myself and to just be happy.

I had a few great memories come back to me:

• Herbie crawling under a table, covering every square inch of his skin with chocolate pudding, then jumping up and yelling "I'm a negro!" (remember, this was like 1976.) Hilarity and punishment ensued.
  
  
• Cub Scout Pack meetings in the cafeteria.
  
  
• The best pizza in Warren was the kind our lunch ladies made.
  
  
• Learning how to play chess from Mr. Bertolini.
  
  
• Dressing up like Pilgrims for a second-grade play. (The other class had to dress up like turkeys!)
  
  
• The principal, Mr. Marino, doing these 1930s-style radio shows over the PA system.

Shipwrecked

I read a story
of a boat
a storm on a sea
and a supernatural rescue.

I can't see You anymore amongst
the wind
the waves
and the rain.

Can You rescue me if my ship is already dashed against the rocks?

April (snow) Showers

I live in Jamestown, New York. Today is April 24. Today's weather forcast says it's only going to warm up into the mid-30s. It's also going to snow. This is all you need to know about living in Jamestown, New York.

Contemplate THIS!

I was thinking about Catherine of Sienna yesterday, specifically her comments on doing all things prayerfully. It all seems so unattainable -- and even unrealistic -- to me. For instance, how do you drive prayerfully? I guess the question of the last few days has been:

"Is it possible for a guy living in the 21st century, with a family, job, mortgage, and car payments to reach any sort of level of contemplation?"

But I remind myself that true contemplation isn't an escape from the world. Just like with Abraham, Moses, the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) a person that makes contact with God becomes more engaged in "real life."

Sigh. I know all about real life. I find myself very distracted by my work right now. There never seems to be enough time to accomplish everything I would like, and I find myself continually wrestling with distracting thoughts even in the evening and on weekends.

It has occurred to me in writing this that I am very contemplative: I contemplate problems, the things that stress me, people that piss me off, my failures, and all sorts of crises real and imagined. If only God could be as present to me as my current distractions and trials... I'd be the new Thomas Merton, I guess...

I Didn't Build It For Me

I went to Mount Saint Benedict's Monastery in Harbor Creek last night for their first Spiritual Connections group of 2005. The program was about Saint Catherine of Sienna, who lived a full life that was an intriguing combination of mysticism, servanthood, and activism. In Catherine's eyes, prayer wasn't just a way of petitioning God -- it was a gateway to a mystical union with God. It was integrated into every area of her life so that it was a continual "stream of living water." I contrasted that with the modern view of prayer as a way of "recharging" before a person goes back into secular life, i.e., the real world. It also made me consider my own steps into mysticism... Am I using spirituality to escape from the realities of life? Saint Catherine would say that the more spiritual a person is, the more that person should be engaged in the world. We ended the evening in the chapel of the monastery where I prayed for a deeper hunger for God, and for God to fill that hunger.

This morning as I was working through Celtic Daily Prayer, I was struck by how lowly and humble was the ministry of Christ: "...who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2: 6 - 8)

I guess what amazes me is how the church is obsessed with big, slick ministries, when its founder was born in a barn, lived a life in service to others and was executed as a criminal. I know that some people would argue that "you have to tell 'em to sell 'em," meaning that you have to compete with the best entertainment and advertising to get people's attention so you can get them in the doors of your church. And to a point I agree -- after all, I was a public relations whore for five years. But at what point does it just become self-promotion and self-aggrandizement?

Last evening and this morning weren't messages that I wanted to hear. Perhaps that's all the more reason to be mindful about heeding them...

Space Age Technology Makes It Possible!

During Benny and Joon last night, a commercial for Victoria's Secret came on touting -- gasp -- THE WORLD'S MOST ADVANCED BRA!!! And to think I didn't hear about this on CNN...

I need to preface the rest of this article by saying that I have had practically zero experience with bras, short of taking them off of some people -- and even that doesn't amount to much experience. Damn those clasps! But I digress.

I realize that no woman wants to go back to the days of jungle vines and coconuts, but now that we've advanced out of that stage by a few thousand years, what else is there to perfect? How different can one bra be from another? It's not like they have thousands of moving parts or there's a lot of options in design. Hey fellas, let's try one with three cups this time! It's not going to happen. So how can one manufacturer lay claim to the "most advanced" crown?

I'd like to find out more about THE WORLD'S MOST ADVANCED BRA. For instance:

• Is there a proud mother somewhere right now talking up her son's accomplishment at bridge club? "Going to work for Victoria's Secret was the best move my Harry ever did after college. Do you know the World's Most Advanced Bra couldn't have happened without him? He's like the Albert Einstein of bras or something!"
  
  
• How exactly do scientists field test a bra? Do they rent out a MIT lab? Do they use caged animals in cruel experiments involving lace? Or do they recruit actual humans? Does anything ever go horribly wrong? Houston, we have a problem!
  
  
• Will bored junior high students someday have to write a midterm paper about it in history class?
  
  
• With The Salad Shooter at one and A Cure For Cancer at ten, where will historians place THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED BRA on the scale of great inventions?
  
  
• How do I get a job on the design team?

I Have Seen My Future And It's Not Pretty

I've had this tooth pain that's been really aggravating me for awhile, but I really started to feel it this weekend. I prepared myself for the worst -- a root canal or a filling -- and went to the dentist office. Or as I like to call it, The House of Pain. Turns out that it was nothing more than receding gums (which is perfectly normal for my age) and can be treated by using Sensodyne when I brush.

I should have been relieved that the problem can be taken care of simply by using Sensodyne, but I've left the office feeling even more troubled. Sensodyne = old. I mean, as long as I'm picking up a tube of Sensodyne at Wal-Mart, shouldn't I just go ahead and stock up on some
Ben Gay and Preparation H for the inevitable?

I'd write more but I gotta go install a Clapper on the lamp next to my bed...

Walking on Water

After spending a great deal of time working on my "kid's club" lesson for the week, I was pleased to have a good number of kids (and teens) participating in the singing, lesson and activities tonight. Our memory verse for the night was "Fix your eyes on Jesus" from Hebrews 12: 2A, so I made a giant pair of sunglasses and my team member plunked the verse under each cut-out lens for the kids to peek under.
When all was said and done - sunglasses embedded with too many stick on jewels, kids faces little hug stained, and hands full of whatever snacks we had on hand at the church - we were ready to go home.

When I drop off kids, I usually try to reinforce the lesson by asking questions, singing songs that we learned and so on. It isn't unusual for the kids to recite their idea of the scripture verse - and much of the time they really do well in remembering the information we pour into them for 1 1/2 hours every Wednesday.

On my next to last drop off tonight, I asked each of the four children in the house what the memory verse was. Kid #1 got the verse dead on. Kid #2 got the concept, but some words were switched about. Kid# 3 nailed the verse and the reference! Great, we're on a roll! Last but not least was little D. With all the enthusiasm I could manage to muster as I asked him, "D, what was our Bible verse tonight?"

With all the confidence of a five-year-old, he grinned and thought about my question for a moment. I repeated my question thinking maybe he hadn't heard me. He heard me just fine.

With sparkling blue eyes, fuzzy blond hair and a toothless grin - D exclaimed, "CHIPS!"

D cherish the blue foil package of potato chips he carried home from church, to his small house by the creek.

D never you worry, God has a lot of potato chips at his house.

Quote of the Day: Busyness

"How thin can I stretch myself until I'm no longer there?" -- The Grateful Dead

Yee-haw!

As if George Bush and trailer parks weren't enough, I now have conclusive proof that the South really won the Civil War: a Dukes of Hazzard movie opens on August 5. And it has Burt Reyonlds in it.

Mark it on your calendar...

...I'm actually too exhausted to blog!

Time is Money

I wish I could come up with a million dollar idea, but I don't imagine I every will. I don't know why.... I mean, it didn't take a degree in rocket science to come up with ideas like charging someone $3.50 for a cup of coffee, pet rocks, or Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I guess my problem is that I overthink the whole thing... The trick seems to find something people already do, like drink water or wear blue jeans and convince them to shell out big bucks to do the same damn thing. Isn't that what the bottled water and designer jeans people did? So what are some other products people use everyday that I can charge ten times their worth? Toilet paper? Toothpaste? Gum?

What I really wish I could do is come up with a way to make a 25 hour day. Now that would be a million dollar idea!

Apple Mentioned on New Doctor Who Show

I saw another Apple reference in the popular media... I've been following the new British Dr. Who series and last Saturday's episode took place far in the future. A character was showing off archaeological treasures from the past and wheeled out a fifties-style jukebox and said, "This was called an iPod."

Come to think of it, shouldn't Apple have used a Tom Baker-era Doctor in its Think Different campaign?

Blue Uniform TV

BLUE UNIFORM COMEDY TOUR

Salvation Army goes mainstream with new tour, movie and television program

What the average American knows about The Salvation Army could easily fill a small paragraph in an encyclopedia. Seeking to raise awareness about the 140 year-old church and charity in an increasingly competitive marketplace, Salvation Army leadership has enlisted the help of comedians Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy.

“It’s about time our denomination brought in some outside help for a little public relations,” said Colonel Humbug, a high-ranking officer from the organization’s national headquarters. “It’s embarrassing to have new acquaintances continually ask if I really go to church inside a thrift store.”

The idea for the unlikely partnership came about when Salvation Army top brass chanced upon an episode of Blue Collar TV on The WB. Col. Humbug explains: “We noticed that Foxworthy and friends took an otherwise ignored segment of the population—namely, rednecks—and made them downright popular. So we got to thinking, why not us? I mean, they must be doing something right. The size of their studio audience alone easily dwarfs our church’s national membership numbers!”

Many rural fans, still traumatized from the Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines fiasco, have expressed doubt that the comedy trio’s act can withstand the transition from country corn to Salvationist slapstick. But a recent try-out of the new Blue Uniform Comedy material at a Salvation Army community center left the audience clamoring for more. One man exiting the corps commented, “It’s not really that different once you get past the little changes, like Larry the Cable Guy. He’s now Larry the Kettle Guy and goes around yelling GIT-R-RUNG!”

Foxworthy, Engvall and Larry aren’t the only ones who are adjusting their act. The Salvation Army itself is making some adjustments in anticipation of welcoming the trio’s existing fanbase to its denomination. For instance, the organization has traded in their massive emergency disaster vehicles for pickup trucks with gun racks. And the iconic blue uniform now comes in a special sleeveless version with hunting boots.

The Blue Uniform Comedy Tour, which is being filmed for an upcoming theatrical release, begins its tour of Salvation Army corps next month. Blue Uniform TV will premiere this fall on The WB. In related news, Target has announced that it won’t sponsor the show.

* * *

…YOU MAY BE A SALVATIONIST
If walking into a department store without a bell makes you feel naked…
If you can have coffee and doughnuts ready at a fire scene even before the fire trucks show up…
If you’ve ever misused Psalm 132:9—“be clothed in righteousness”—to defend uniform wearing...
If your calendar is divided into only two seasons: Christmas and Almost Christmas…
If you assume that making a person listen to a sermon is a prerequisite to eating a bowl of soup…
If your offering and United Way pledge end up in the same place…
If you regularly wrap and deliver more gifts at Christmastime than Santa …
If you believe baptism and communion are traditions you can easily get along without, but think the church will fold if it doesn’t keep the tradition of uniforms and brass bands…

***

THE RED KETTLE DICTIONARY
HORNY - adjective. How our brass band sounds.

***

HERE’S YOUR SIGN

A couple of months ago I went to a meeting of my local pastoral association. A guy took a look at my uniform and goes, “Hey, y’all the pastor of The Salvation Army?”

Nope.

I’m a Congregationalist who likes to cross dress as a meter maid.

Here's your sign.

THE END

Okay, everybody -- we confess: This a late April Fool's Day joke by I.F. & Mr. X!

And the ten-thousand dollar prize goes to...

...the Experiment House Family of Jamestown, New York!

Or at least that's what the announcer of America's Funniest Home Videos would have said if we only had a video camera handy! Lamont tells me that last night I had a snoring fit, which our shepherd-collie took to be dog language and carried on a conversation with me.

I.F.: SCNARRRRFFFFF!

DOG: RA-ORF?

I.F.: SCNARRRRFFFFF!

DOG: AAA-EERF.

I.F.: SCNARRRRFFFFF!

DOG: RIFF!

Sigh.

Uh, I guess you had to be there.