If Hollywood calls me to remake Empire Records, he’s how I would recast it:

Lucas: Rory Cochrane to JGL

Lucas is an idealistic, quirky music fan who is skeptical of the man. That is basically Joseph Gordon-Levitt in real life and in every role.

AJ: Johnny Whitworth to Robert Pattinson

AJ is artistic and moody and fixated on a girl. And he has great hair. This is what R-Pat loves to do. He’s pretty funny in How to Deal, and I think he’d like being in an ensemble movie.

Debra: Robin Tunney to Emma Watson

Debra is dark and sensitive, which seems to be what Emma Watson is getting into playing. Plus, she can pull off very short hair.

Gina: Renee Zellweger to Jennifer Lawrence

Gina allegedly gets around but also has a real heart of gold. She uses her looks as a shield. J-Law’s got this role in the bag.

Mark: Ethan Embry to Logan Lerman

Mark is kind of a cool dork with an innocence about him. Lerman nailed this in Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Corey: Liv Tyler to Brittany Snow

Corey seems like she’s playing alternative but is actually privileged, but secretly furious, which was Brittany Snow in Hairspray.

Joe: Anthony LaPaglia to Mark Duplass

Joe is still not a cog in the man’s machine, but he’s a little older and more cynical than the rest of the crew. And he’s a musician. Duplass is musical and is always ready to stick it to the man.

Rex Manning: Max Caulfield to Paul Rudd

Rex Manning is a washed-up creep who is good-looking and has strong features. Paul Rudd is not washed up, but he is old enough to play someone who is washed up.

Any suggestions? Who did I miss?

Fancy Cyclops, ha!

As I was driving around last night, I was reminded of the truth that even if our loved ones leave us in this life, they’re going home to God. Nothing can separate us from God’s love and therefore from each other. We’ll see each other again.

Growing up in the Church of Christ gave me a chance to hear a lot of the church’s older hymns. One of my favorites has always been When We All Get to Heaven by Eliza Hewitt. Here’s an awesome bluegrass version of that song (try not to tap your foot):

I thought I loved playing bass more than anyone, but obviously my heavenly sister in that video does.

Here’s Brad Paisley, slowing things down and keeping things cool with his own version:

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. – I Corinthians 15:26

For most of my life, I never understood why God wanted us to glorify and worship Him. It seemed to be narcissistic, or arrogant, or otherwise similar to behavior demonstrated by my comic book villains. For a God that wanted our complete attention and obedience, He didn’t seem to be a very selfless or humble being. He didn’t seem very loving. He seemed pushy. In short, it didn’t make sense to me why a supposedly selfless God would seem so greedy.

Now that God has led me up the road a bit, it makes perfect sense to me why God would want our adoration. It’s hard to explain because it’s a matter of perspective. You have to see it.

If you climbed to the top of a plateau overlooking an African savannah at sunset, you could tell me how gorgeous the view was. You could tell me it brought tears to your eyes and inspired you. If I was still sitting at the bottom, I wouldn’t really understand. How could I? I hadn’t experience your sunset on the plateau. It wouldn’t matter whether or not I believed you, I just couldn’t know.

If we climbed up to the top of the plateau together the next day at dusk, then I would stand next to you and nod and feel the goosebumps on my arms. “Yes, now I understand. It is gorgeous.”

Giving God glory and praise is the same way.

While I have spent decades studying God, it feels like only recently that I have gotten to know Him a bit. When I say “know” Him, I mean to participate in real fellowship and relationship. Knowing facts about God isn’t the same thing as knowing God just as knowing facts about light isn’t the same thing as seeing that sunset on the savannah. What I’ve seen gives me goosebumps and the urge to tell people about what I’ve seen, even if no one seems as excited as me (yet). God wants us to give Him glory and worship because he is beautiful, the source of all beauty, and He deserves it. And when we see that, we are so much better off.  Our lives will be more joyful and fruitful,we will know our place in the world, and we will know our place in His Kingdom. Even when he demands our worship, God is not being arrogant or selfish. He’s helping us.

If you are searching for God and you haven’t found the beauty yet, don’t be discouraged. If you ask, He’ll lead you up to the plateau and you’ll see with your own eyes.

Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your justice like the ocean depths.
You care for people and animals alike, O LORD.
How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings.
You feed them from the abundance of your own house,
letting them drink from your rivers of delight.
For you are the fountain of life, the light by which we see. (David)

In honor of MLK Day, I want to share a few resources that may be helpful to you in making peace in both your personal and public life.

The Peacemaker (Ken Sande): I read this book for a grad school class and absolutely loved it. It was transformative. The Peacemaker is a biblically based guide to resolving personal conflict. It has practical, Biblical advice on checking yourself (prior to wrecking yourself), deciding if a conflict is appropriate for confrontation, how to discuss conflict with others, and forgiveness. If you are married, have friends, or would like to interact with other human beings, please read this book! I think it was great for taming my Latin temper. In other words, it made me less of a jackass.

The Art of Forgiving (Lewis B. Smedes): I am lucky in that I’ve never really had anyone do anything horrible to me. If you have, I think that this book may be helpful for you in thinking through what forgiveness means, what it does and doesn’t include, and how it will free you. I’m basing that on in-depth group discussions that I’ve had with others who have read the book. One of the most interesting points in the book to me is that forgiveness requires a wrong, so it requires naming an evil. I think that is very powerful both for the victim and the offender. You can’t truly move on unless you have an event from which to move.

Difficult Conversations (Stone, Patton, Heen): My main takeaway from this book is that “when we fail to share what’s most important to us, we detach ourselves from others and damage our relationships.” In other words, a failure to have a difficult conversations is a failure to value yourself and your friend. You’ve decided that the relationship isn’t worth the effort.

This book also has great practical advice about how to fight. For example, if your main point is, “I want to spend more time with you,” don’t start with or make subtextual arguments like, “Why do you have to go out with your friends all the time?”

I hope these are helpful for you. If you have questions about these or other resources, let me know!

Would you favor or oppose a proposal to put armed guards in every school in the country?Favor: 54%
Oppose: 45%
No Opinion: 1%

Stricter Gun Laws:
Favor: 55%
Oppose: 44%
No Opinion: 1%

Would stricter gun laws reduce violence?
Would not reduce: 61%
Would reduce: 39%

My question is this: If only 39% of those polled believe that stricter gun laws would reduce violence, why do 55% of the polled favor stricter gun laws? What are the other 16% who favor stricter laws hoping for?

My best guess is that even if they don’t believe the stricter laws would matter, they believe it is the right thing to do. I can understand trying to do the right thing in the face of poor odds (I generally vote libertarian), and in this case it’s confusing to me. If we’re trying to solve a particular problem (gun violence), why enact policies that we don’t believe would be effective? Is it a moral issue?

I welcome your input!

“A former soldier completes his ninja training and travels to the Philippines to visit his Army buddy where he is forced to battle a greedy land grabber.”

CREDITS

A ninja is swinging around nunchucks. Now he has a sword. A gong sounds! “ENTER THE NINJA” says the title credits. Now the ninja has a bow. Once we see a sai all the Ninja Turtles are – he brought out the sai! This ninja has the skills of all of the Ninja Turtles combined. Now he’s demonstrating all kinds of weapons I’ve never seen before. Now a white ninja dressed in white is fighting a ninja dressed in black! Face kick!

NINJAS FIGHTING

The ninja in white and the ninja in black are running around in the Japanese jungle. Two ninja in red are running around also. The soundtrack is kind of like ninja jazz.

I can’t do the next few minutes justice. Just imagine ninja fighting in the jungle with ninja jazz in the background. A ninja just caught two arrows right of the air! Someone just took a throwing star to the face! The white ninja just threw down smoke and fire and disappeared! Where do the ninja keep all of these gadgets? They need utility belts. White ninja is jogging along a lake!

Man, I wish everyone could come over right now and watch this with me. Sword fights in a waterfall! White ninja just jumped down a 100 foot waterfall!

White ninja is at some kind of enemy compound now and he is fighting all of the red ninja. Smoke everywhere! Flipping!

“Surrender or die!” says the white ninja. This is the first written dialogue. The defeated ninja chooses surrender. White ninja just bowed to an old man and cut off what is clearly a mannequin’s head. Now he’s sneaking into a house, even though he literally just cut off someone’s head on the front porch after flipping through smoke. I’m pretty even a mediorce ninja leader would already be aware of his presence. It’s probably ok just to walk in at this point.

The white ninja just sat down and took off his mask and he looks just like Bill Paxton with a mustache. He’s like a beefcakey Ron Swanson. Now all the red ninja like him and they’re all sitting together with that cut off mannequin head. I’m not really sure what is happening.

There are nine levels of power discussed by the ninja leader: Strength, direction, harmony, healing, premonition, knowing, mastery of time and space, controlling nature, enlightenment. Woah…woah…apparently the ninja fights I just witnessed were not lethal and were part of a test. It actually was a mannequin head. I thought that was just how the prop department decided to handle that scene, but I guess it was supposed be a mannequin head. And the white guy just got his “license as master of ninjitsu”. Man, I didn’t even know this was an option. I can’t believe I went to law school instead of ninja school.

In the next scene, all the ninja are drinking sake. Kampai! One of the ninja doesn’t think the white guy is a real ninja because he doesn’t drink alcohol.

WHITE NINJA GOES TO THE PHILIPPINES

White ninja just broke into some kind of compound again, presumably of “an old friend”. A blonde woman with a shotgun just snuck up on him and threatened him. This guy just graduated from ninja school, how did he miss a white woman with a shotgun walking up to him? He takes the gun from her. It turns out she’s the wife of his old Army buddy. We already see that his old friend has a drinking problem and she’s upset about it. I think the shotgun lady is going to fall for the white ninja, whose name is Cole. Cole drinks juice instead of booze. We learn everyone’s name. The white ninja is Cole, the Army buddy is Frank, and Frank’s wife is Mary Ann.

I need to talk about everyone’s accents. Everyone talks in a stunted, exaggerated manner like it’s overdubbed, except it is not overdubbed. Mary Ann has some sort of British accent sometimes, or maybe Australian.  She looks like British Goldie Hawn. (She’s played by Susan George, who was in Straw Dogs.)

We learn that Frank is upset because someone is trying to take his land. My guess for the plot is that the Army friend will die and Cole will save the land, vanquish the bad guy, and end up with Mary Ann. But first, he has to train with nunchucks on the front lawn:

This movie had me at “training shirtless in the yard with nunchucks”.

THE PLOT THICKENS

Oh no, Cole is going into town with Mary Ann. The music changes from ninja jazz to funky jazz. I hate it when people cheat, even in movies so I’m not liking where this going. Oh no, a giant guy in bellbottoms and a man dressed like Colonel Sander are in town! I think we found out who the villain will be. This movie reminds me of Road House for several reasons. Colonel Sanders has a Captain Hook hand! He sounds British or Australian or something. He’s beating up shop owners.

IMDB lists this character as “The Hook”.

Cole and Mary Ann go back home.

Oh man, some thugs are beating up people on Frank’s property and Cole goes nuts! Flying kicks! Planks of wood to the gut! Arm break! We get some exposition and learn that Frank has a drinking problem because of all of the criminals, and that Mary Ann wants to stand up to the criminals. She goes back to town to hire some new workers. I’m not sure why they don’t just stay in town.

While she’s in town, Cole has to fight the Hook. It turns out the Hook is a henchman for a “Mr. Venarius”. He seems to be some kind of CEO of bad guys in the Philippines. The Hook, who now has a German accent and is named Sigfried, explains to Mr. Venarius that Cole is a problem. “We must have Frank’s property! I want it!” explains Mr. V. Say what you will about evil businessmen, at least you know where Venarius stands. He’s going to personally pick ten henchmen to fight Cole. In order to pick the cream of the crop, Mr. V has a bunch of bad guys get together, then he tells them to fight each other. The ten guys standing will fight Cole. Then Mr. V has people spy on Cole at a polo match to get some background.

MILITARY FLASHBACK!

Frank saved Cole’s life in Angola.

THE WAR BEGINS

The Hook and the ten henchmen show up at Frank’s ranch and start beating people up. Cole and Mary Ann ride in on horses to stop the fighting. Cole is beating up seven guys at once! They start running away! Where are they going? Presumably Frank’s ranch is some distance from the village, let alone Manila. Holy crap, Cole rips off The Hook’s hook! “Hey, you forgot something!” he says and the music goes “Wah wah waaaaaaa!” (Really!) Siegfried limps back to Manila, where Mr. Venarius’s office is located.

Mr. V is into choreographing synchronized swimming. He is training synchronized swimmers in the pool located inside his office. He wants to send more men to fight Cole. Little does he know that Frank and Cole are coming for him.

For the third time, Cole raids a compound. Mr. V makes all of his henchmen wear white suits, and they are soiling those suits because they’re scared of the White Ninja! Cole takes out fourteen by himself.  All kinds of very slow, half-hearted kicks are flying. No one is attempting to make their punches look like they actually landed. (I don’t think these actors went to any kind of combat boot camp.) Frank and Cole win the fight! This time, it’s Cole who carries out Frank. They go to a bar, where Frank confides in Cole that he is not currently active in the boudoir. Frank’s character is actually kind of sad. I think he had PTSD. He just doesn’t have any will to fight anymore and he feels incompetent with Mary Ann.

Oh boy, sadly I was right. Cole and Marianne get to “know” each other. I think Frank made her do it? It’s a weird dynamic. It’s kind of like the old book Shane, or Arthurt/Guinivere/Lancelot. Did y’all know that the name Jennifer probably comes from Guinevere? Ok, this scene is over, back to the plot.

We’re back in Manila with Mr. V. He thinks that Cole is a ninja. He goes to a movie agent in Japan to help him find an actual ninja to fight Cole. To find an actual ninja, they go to the school where Cole trained, and they pick…the guy who said Cole isn’t a ninja. This is bad news.

Cole decides to break into Mr. V’s office to figure out why Frank’s land is worth so much to Mr. V. It turns out that “according to these geological reports” (which Cole can read with ease), there’s a lot of oil on Frank’s land. They also stumble upon film of the bad ninja from Japan shooting the bad guy with arrows! Cole can now prepare for ninja war, at least.

FRANK IN DANGER!

The ninja shows up at Frank and Mary Ann’s ranch! He’s wearing a traditional ninja outfit. I’m sorry, but I have think that in 1981, street clothes would be a more useful form of camouflage. How would you even get to someone’s ranch in a ninja outfit? Do you take a bus and then walk? I can’t imagine the looks you’d get. Surely someone would call the police. Well, I guess his disguise was good enough because he just killed Frank and captured Mary Ann, presumably to take her to Manila to draw out Cole?

Cole, utilizing his master ninja skills, returns back to the home and slowly figures out that something is wrong based on the fact that no one is home and everything is broken in the house. Also because poor Frank is floating in the pool. Cole has Army flashbacks again. The weird thing is they are always the only two guys in the Army scenes. Are we positive they were in the Army?

Mr. V. may have been able to take down poor Frank, but he obviously doesn’t know what he’s in for with Cole.

COLE: THE VANILLA THRILLA IN MANILA

Cole dons an all-white ninja outfit and he’s got like two hundred ninja weapons on him. He’s in Mr. V’s office building. This seems like the least-stealthy outfit possible. It took him about twelve seconds to make it up to Mr. V’s penthouse office. You would hope as an oil tycoon with a pool in your office, you can get better henchmen and guards. But, you know what they say about finding good help.

Just bein’ a ninja.

Mr. V’s assistant shows up agrees to just take him on over to Mr. V. Think of all the henchmen who could’ve been saved had the assistant just waited in the lobby. Apparently Mr. V is not in the building, so the white ninja gets in a town car with everyone and drives out of town. Do they talk about anything in the car? Do they listen to music?

“So, Vanilla Ninja, does the suit breathe well?”

“Surprisingly, yes. It’s moisture wicking.”

“Ah, fantastic. You really need that in this jungle climate, even if you aren’t a stealthy mercenary. So humid! ”

“Yep. Hey, how do you guys feel about turning up some yacht rock?”

“On it!”

Well, as you can guess, Cole fights a bunch of bad guys and then kills Mr. V to avenge Frank’s death. Mr. V has a very melodramatic demise, as seen here:

I cannot stress how wonderfully overacted this scene was.

BUT, the bad ninja still has Mary Ann. Wait, he just let her go. A ninja with honor. I guess he just wants to fight Cole. So now they’re fighting in some kind of fighting ring. In all seriousness, I like the fight choreography and videography because you can actually see the fight, as opposed to extreme close-ups and shaky camera angles. Eventually Cole wins, heads to the airport, and winks at me.

“You’re welcome, viewer.”

THE END.

I’ve watched Sam use Pinterest for a year or so, but I’ve never really used it myself. So, today, I’m headed down the rabbit hole. I’m rolling through Pinterest. I’m going to look at what my friends think is shareworthy, the most popular posts, and then I’m going to give my analysis.

[Scrolling through a few dozen posts.]

Ok, Crock Pots are a big deal. You can make desserts, shredded chicken stuff, you can freeze bags of stuff to put in crock pots at a later date. There are a lot of pictures of bathrooms, which is beyond my understanding. It’s just over my head. Picture frames…lots of Ryan Gosling. Honest question – can some girls please explain to me what’s with this Gosling obsession? He’s been around at least since we were in high school but all of a sudden he’s like the biggest deal ever.

Abs everywhere! Ladies, what’s up with all the abs? I do know that guys look at guy abs all the time in Mens Health, GQ, too. What do we need abs so much for in 2013? What are we lifting? In what scenario will we need to knock out thousands of crunches?

Ok, now there’s a lot of pins about hair, which makes sense because you can keep them all together for when you want to change your hair. This is not a problem for me. (Bald.)

Man, there’s a lot of fairly in-depth DIY home projects in here. Turn an old door into a shelf. Make a bed. Pour the foundation for your new home. Forge your own silverware. Just kidding, there’s no talk of foundations. It looks like the point of Pinterest as far as I can see is it’s kind of a clearinghouse for you to compile your interests in one place on the internet and get new ideas. All these DIY projects look like torture to me. Why would I want to make shelves out of an abandoned car? Scavengerist. The Great Depressionist. In my free time I like to sit here. I wonder if there is a site about that? Now that I think about it, it’s pretty cool that people are learning how to make things and fix things themselves. Is there a site that teaches you woodworking? I could get into that.

Now I’m going to click on the page that shows the most popular pins.

One of the Backstreet Boys is the first thing that popped up. That tells me people my age like Pinterest. Here is a sign that says, “Wear fabulous underwear even if you are the only person who is going to see it.” Me and my friends are always saying that to each other so I don’t need that pin.

Let’s see, here’s more Ryan Gosling, here’s some boy band members I’ve never heard of…Bradley Cooper…”Begin at the beginning & go on till you come to the end: then stop.” That was pinned 112 times…an hakuna matata tattoo.

Whoa! Look at this full-grown cocker retriever!

WHAT ARE YOU!

That made the past twenty minutes of pinning easily worth it.

Here’s a sign that says “Don’t try to win over the haters. You’re not the jackass whisperer.” I think that’s attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. Here’s more pictures of women’s abs, then shirtless Johnny Depp, sans abs. (Johnny Depp doesn’t care about abs!) I’m not sure what to make of this:

Here’s a pin that says, “Aries are a sociable people.” More hair pins, more Crock Pot…ok I think I’ve reached the starting point. No,  wait, there’s this:

Nightmares.

Ok, after a good half-hour browsing the internet sensation that is Pinterest, here are my observations:

1. The one thing that all women on Pinterest agree on is Ryan Gosling.
2. Crock Pots probably helped start up Pinterest.
3. Abs everywhere! (Both on Gosling and women.) In all seriousness, there are a lot of esteem-destroying posts like “What you eat in private you wear in public.” and “Bye bye, thunder thighs.” If I were a girl and I spent twenty minutes on Pinterest I think I would never go outside without a burlap sack covering my body. Some of these quotes and posts seem kind of misogynistic to me. Ladies, you a’ight! Johnny Depp doesn’t care about your midsection!
4. Baby animals are awesome.

I might give Pinterest a try. You can find me at pinterest.com/halbey. Do you have any tips about the best way to use the site? Please share.