WHO CARES about the trailer for Iron Man 3 when there’s a new TV spot for The Hobbit?
Spin-Off Online and Empire are reporting that the first of three new films from Peter Jackson is clocking in at 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Here’s 30 seconds of that to help your day along!
CONFESSION: I really don’t care for contemporary worship music. Part of it is a matter of content and style. Another part of it is that I blame worship music for doing away with other kinds of Christian radio that I quite liked, thank you very much. But I’m always open to maybe giving fresh music a try.
I’m also always leery of the music that Relevant Magazine posts on its website. As much as I love the site, its veneer of cool can by off-putting. They recently posted a song by the Rend Collective Experiment, a worship band from Ireland. Yes, they sound a lot like Mumford & Sons. And yes, there lyrics are quite obvious. . . and yet they are obvious in a way that I wish more musicians could articulate. Even still, give it a listen (and a look- the video has good production values) to “Build Your Kingdom Here,” and see what you think.
third in an unfortunately erratic series
STRANGE AS IT MAY SEEM, How I Met Your Mother has an interesting tendency to bring up often-important issues in a timely manner. The show, seen mostly through the eyes of hopelessly romantic Ted Mosby, has always worked the relationship angle. Now that Marshall and Lily are parents, things are even more complicated.
In this past week’s episode, Lily and Marshall leave the cocoon of the home in order to find who would be Marvin’s best god-parent. Marshall then uses his knack for game shows to bring the friends into a round of “Who Wants to Be a Godparent?” The game goes well until the Ted, Robin, and Barney leave in a huff for feeling unimportant to two of their best friends. And while the difficult issue is resolved by the end of the episode, it’s something that doesn’t get talked about often.
How do you balance friendships when things like marriage and children enter the picture? It’s obvious that some kind of guilt can be felt on both sides (“I don’t have the time” and “I don’t want to be an imposition”). So how do you make it work? What are important things for those in this situation to think about?
You can check out the whole episode of How I Met Your Mother here.
(P.S. While in Denver, I stayed with dear friends who are parents of a toddler, and they were great hosts. I’m blessed to have them in my life. So this isn’t directed at the Amazing Duncans. It’s an interesting situation, though, that has me curious as to how this can play out.)
I’VE BEEN A FAN of marketing guru Seth Godin for a while now. His daily thoughts often transcend marketing and find their way into my thoughts about life and teaching and church. So I was excited to hear that Godin had put together his thoughts on education reform in a free e-book titled Stop Stealing Dreams. Last week he posted a TED talk presentation of those thoughts. I’m glad that he’s “asking the question” about education reform. I’m not sure I agree with his solutions, though.
I really like his opening points on the historic evolution of change. His solutions, though? Not so sold on them. I appreciate his thoughts and even acknowledge that some things (like the “flipped classroom” of online learning) have potential. I just think that education is about more than transferring knowledge. A lot more. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
You can check out Godin’s e-book and other information about Stop Stealing Dreams here.
I’M NOT SURE HOW I WENT A WEEK NOT KNOWING THIS, but J. R. R. Tolkien has a new book coming out in 2013. And it could be a good one.
Before Tolkien sat down to write The Hobbit, he took some time to retell the story of King Arthur as an epic poem. Poetry isn’t something foreign to Tolkien and his writing. His Middle Earth material is full of songs and poems. I have to admit that I skipped those poems for my first few read-throughs, but I’ve grown to appreciate them and the role they play in Tolkien’s world.
The Fall of Arthur will clock in at 200 pages of alliterative poetry. It will detail the final days of Arthur’s Camelot. Some hope that it accomplishes some rehabilitation of the story popularized by Malory. I’m a fan of T. H. White’s version, The Once and Future King (which begins with The Sword in the Stone). Either way, the story is epic and tragic and (hopefully) all kinds of good.
You can read more about it at the Guardian’s site here.
A WISE MAN ONCE SAID that hope deferred makes the heart bitter. That’s often the case, unless you know that maybe hope deferred will get you a better time slot or premiere date.
That’s the way it’s gone with NBC’s Community. After losing its creator/show-runner and then being relegated to a Friday-night “death slot,” it looks like Community is getting a weird kind of reprieve. And to celebrate it’s postponement, the cast has put together this nice little piece. Enjoy it like it’s October 19!
THERE’S SOMETHING INTRIGUING about the arc of Katy Perry’s life. Raised in a religious home– making an album of religious music– achieving music star status without the use of a show like American Idol— star-studded marriage and separation. The question of what comes next holds all kinds of possibilities, but it seems that a recent moment has trumped everything else.
According to the Huffington Post and Twitter, Perry has achieved “the most important moment” of her career so far. How? As part of Comedy Central‘s Night of Too Many Stars in support of autism research and support, Perry sang her song “Firework” with Jodi DiPiazza, who both sang and played piano. DiPiazza does a great job with the song, and Perry does a good job of making room for an amazing young woman.
I WAS A BIT SURPRISED when Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series founds its way onto the most recent episode of Glee. The last time the show tackled religion, in season two’s “Grilled Cheesus” episode, the storyline was meaty and challenging. This time around, it looked like some weird throw-away moment used to dismiss religion. And then this happened:
The scene takes place in an episode where a number of last season’s graduates return to take care of some broken relationships, some broken dreams, and some broken promises. Some of the remaining students have joined what amounts to a Left Behind reading group, whose leader pulls a “prank” on one girl by having everyone disappear while she is in the bathroom. Is it a shoe-horned and slightly forced moment? Yes. But does it convey a hard truth? I think so.
Getting “left behind” is no easy thing, and many of us have had our share of being on both sides of it. We leave high school, college, hometown, family. We get left behind by loved ones taking new jobs, following a divine call, lost because of a broken body. Abandonment for any reason is rarely an easy thing. Human frailty compounds the experience. I know it because I’ve been guilty of it, and that’s something I’ve had to work on over the years.
It’s always a little frustrating when Glee does something that right. So many episodes seem like so much fluff, moving from one theme week to another. But getting left behind sucks, and it can hurt. And while we don’t need silly musical television shows to teach us this, it is good that they can occasionally remind us of it and, in turn, encourage us to try better the next time.
THESE ARE GOOD DAYS FOR READERS OF NEW STUFF. This summer saw the release of a new (and National Book Award finalist) Dave Eggers novel . Then there was the first full biography of David Foster Wallace. Just before Denver I finished Jonathan Tropper’s latest deconstruction of 21st century manhood. I’ve given myself 48 hours to finish Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue for one reason and one reason only: Justin Cronin’s sequel to The Passage drops Tuesday.
I’m not one for horror stories. I get my zombie fix with The Walking Dead. Werewolves have never been high on my horror list. And while I’m quick to mock anything that has to do with the vampires of the Twilight series, Cronin’s take on a post-apocalyptic America overrun by vampires was enthralling. I remember well working through a quick lunch and reading page after page at Aloha Tower: the most I’ve enjoyed reading a novel in a long time.
So I’m pretty pumped about The Twelve. Word is that it covers two time periods, mirroring the format of the first novel. It’s exciting to find yourself in a story whose ending is unknown.
The folks at The Beast caught up with Cronin a few days ago to talk life and craft. It’s a nice teaser for what I hope to be a great book. Check out the interview here. And if you want an intense, intelligent page-turner, find a copy of The Passage (and then The Twelve). I think you’ll be glad you did.
JUST BEFORE HE LOST HOME AND PLANET, Arthur Dent threw back six quick pints at the neighborhood bar on order from his (alien) friend, Ford. Why? To prep for the effects of on instantaneous travel. Dent learned that traveling far quickly is no easy thing, that materializing from one place to another taxes both spirit and flesh.
After a week in Denver with dear friends, I found myself materializing in a hot and humid early evening in Honolulu. I’ve spent the last four days feeling like Arthur Dent after that first jaunt, disoriented and trying to achieve normal. I’m not convinced that my spirit has caught up with my body. Or perhaps somehow over the trip, the shape of one had changed slightly, had shifted, the two no longer fitting. I haven’t felt steady yet, still not fully formed.
So I’m going to church today a little tentative, and I’m unsure of how ready I’ll be for the ring of Monday’s 7:45 school bell. I think I’ll catch up to myself some time soon. Until then, here are a couple of other Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie clips to serve as a reminder that traveling long distances in a short amount of time always takes a little time to get over.
Space Enough, and Time 