Category: media

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ignored beauty


there is some great stuff on some of the blogs i read. one of those blogs is len evans and he had the above video on his blog yesterday. the video is amazing. the video is from an article in the washington post on the world renown violinist joshua bell playing for 45 minutes as a street performer in a plaza. the whole thing was done to see how many people would recognize the beauty and talent that was along the path that they were desperately rushing through.

how much beauty did we walk past today without giving it a second look?
[tags]joshua bell, beauty, ignored, washing post[/tags]

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casino royale

casino_royale_3.jpg
i’m presently watching “casino royale” and even though i am currently only half way through the movie i have to say that i am very impressed. it is extremely different from all the other bond movie (which i loved) but it is different in a good way. i’m enjoying “casino royale” because it’s a new interpretation on the old movies. i love it when people take chances. with an hour to go it looks like this was a chance worth taking.

SIDE NOTE – i’ve lost the ncaa bracket. when kansas lost to ucla my hopes went down the drain. it appears that i will be stuck with second (or worse) and sharron will end up winning. oh the pain.

my run for the day
distance – 7.1 miles
time – 1:08:36
pace – 9:40/mile

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missing in action?

hello there guys and girls. i notice today that a few of the books that i really like are m.i.a. apparently i’ve loaned them out and didn’t record who i loaned them to. so here’s my plea. if you have any of my books (particularly “20 hot potatoes CHRISTians are afraid to touch” by tony campolo, “is JESUS a republican or a democrat” by tony campolo, “a history of western philosophy: the classical mind, volume 1” by w.t. jones, and others) could you let me know you have them or simply send them back anonymously? thanks.

my run for the day
distance – 5.4 miles
time – 49:29
pace – 9:09/mile

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13.1 stories

my legs have rested and i’m moving better now so i thought i would write out a few interesting stories from the half-marathon i ran yesterday.

  • i didn’t get to see this but pam did and told me about it – there was a 1.2 mile fun run that was organized along with the half marathon. the last person to finish the fun run was a 6 to 7 year old boy who had down’s syndrome. he had run the whole race by himself. when he got close to the finish line his mother jumped out to stand at the finish line. she began shouting to her son “i am so proud of you! you can make it, just keep running! i’m so very proud of you!” when the crowd realized what an amazing moment this was they all jumped into the act. the crowd began to scream wildly for the little guy. he was just focused on his mother and she kept shouting how proud she was him. the whole scene ended with him running into his mother arms and everyone else cheering. of course, pam couldn’t see this because she was too busy balling her head off.
  • the start to my race was a little more exciting than i had hoped for. i run with an mp3 player. when they started the race with my brother-n-law, sister-n-law, and i in the middle of the pact i pressed the “play” button on my mp3 player. it was at that very moment that my mp3 player fell out of its strap and onto the pavement. when i turned around to get it i was face to face with 400 people who were running straight at me. for some reason these people didn’t seem to understand that i needed to go back the twenty feet to my mp3 player. i swam upstream towards my player moving people out of the way. when i got to my mp3 player and reached down for it things didn’t get much better. now instead of me avoiding bodies that were coming towards me it was my hands quickly avoiding feet that were coming towards them. even though i finally was able to get my player back it was probably the scariest part of the entire race for me.
  • the water station at mile 6 was manned by men and women in red dresses – every single one of them. it was a very odd experience. some of them were very ugly guys in very skimpy dresses.
  • the whole event got me very excited about the music city marathon that we are going to in april. it was fun running with 1,000 people. it will be incredible running with 20,000 people. my brother-n-law is blogging about his training for the marathon. you can read his blog here.
  • i just found out from the race results on the mobile press register that i was 214th out of the 410 half-marathoners.

SIDE NOTE – i’ve started watching the dvd edition of the “firefly” tv show. it’s really good. too bad the series only lasted one year.

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love & hate

LOVE
january 14th “24” starts up again. i can’t wait to see the next adventures of jack bauer. the show may not be in it’s prime anymore but i still get a kick out it each sunday.

HATE
house drives me crazy. i’ve only seen the show a couple of times. once i watched it to see what all the hub-bub was about. since then i’ve watched it a little while pam was watching it. thankfully pam has also reached the point of agreeing with me. i simply can’t watch house without getting mad because he reminds me of some of the doctors i used to work with when i was an insurance adjuster back in the ’90s. working worker’s compensation severely lowered my view of many doctors. life is to short to watch a television show that glorifies a jerk.

of course, jack bauer is also a jerk but he is an entertaining jerk. in fact, house and bauer are allot alike – they both constantly break the rules, destroy other peoples’ rights, and only trust their own skill in their attempts to achieve their goals. i guess the main difference is that i don’t know anyone who works in counter terrorism and therefore i can just assume that there are no real jack bauers. unfortunately, i have work with doctors and therefore know that while most are good there actually are some like house.

my run for the day
distance – 5.1 miles
time – 48:31
pace – 9:30/mile

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night at the museum

nightatthemuseum
every CHRISTmas afternoon the fam and i go out to see a movie. this year we went to see ben stiller’s night at the museum. i’ll talk about the movie in a second. first i want to talk about how much i love the grand cinema. pam and i love this movie house. it’s facilities are just as good as any of the big theaters but the thing we like about it is its small neighborhood feel. it’s great. they won our praise on CHRISTmas day by waving us through into the movie when they started having trouble with their credit card reader. they’re credit card machine couldn’t get through on it’s phone line and since we didn’t have any cash on us they gave us tickets for free and waved us through saying “merry CHRISTmas.” it was great.

it was even better when we found out that the movie we had just received free tickets to was a great movie. “night at the museum” was wonderful. pam and i usually love ben stiller so that was no surprise but this was one of the best movies he has done recently. we laughed all through the movie. the experience was even better because of the guys behind us.

pam has been telling me that as i get older i laugh much easier. i find myself laughing out loud at commercials and various other things that i would have never laughed at before. pam’s convinced its the natural result of age. if that’s true then it would explain the older guy behind us because he laughed at everything. things that were only slightly funny because hilarious because he was laughing uncontrollably. we would laugh at the movie and then laugh at the guy behind us who was still laughing at the movie. it made for a great movie going experience. i wish i could get him to sit behind me during every comedy i watch.

all in all i would say that “night at the movie” is one of the best movies i have seen in 2006.

my run for the day
distance – 7.8
total time – 1:17:44
pace – 9:58/mile

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the good and the bad

tonight i’ve watched two movies (actually i’m watching one right now). the family and i watched “elf” and ate homemade pizza as part of the beginning of advent. this is such a great movie. it gets better and better with age.

i’m presently 45 minutes into “the da vinci code” and i’m bored to tears. i can’t believe such an awful movie could stir up such controversy. it’s junk.

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deck the halls


every thanksgiving day the fam and i go to see a movie. it’s a fun thing to do on a lazy afternoon. this year we went to see “deck the halls“. the trailer looked funny and therefore we had decent hopes for an at least adequate movie. it looked funnier than “the santa clause 3” so we felt okay about choosing it. it was a pretty decent movie until the last 10 minutes. it was during the last ten minutes that the moview began to produce more cheese than the state of wisconsin. it was so bad that pam and i started singing “calling all angels” to each other in memory of the greatest of all cheesey movies “pay it forward“. if you really like cheedar in your movies then this is worth seeing at the theater, otherwise rent it on a very dull night.

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JESUS camp


pam and i just finished watching JESUS camp and i was amazed. i highly recommend the movie.

my run for the day
distance 5.6 miles
time – 51:15
pace – 9:05/mile

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gentlemen, you can’t fight in here this is the war room!

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i’m not sure that this will relate to those who are too young to remember living during the cold war but i watched “dr. strangelove or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb for the first time tonight. i laughed my butt off.

my run for the day
distance – 3.6 miles
total time – 34:15
pace – 9:45/mile