Cathie, Jes and I watched the movie Thirteen on Saturday. Good movie, but very disturbing from a parent's perspective and from a youth pastor's perspective. The movie was about a thirteen year old seventh grader in a single parent home outside of LA. Throughout the movie, you see a girl who wants to be accepted by cool kids, and ends up being systematically being dragged into drugs, shoplifting, sex and rebellion against her Mom. I was really uncomfortable while I was watching it. I kept thinking of my kids, and the kids in Fusion, wanting to save them, save this girl from what's going on. It's a movie that I'd reccomend for some parents to watch with their kids - and talk about at the end. There's some great teaching moments out of the movie. It does a great job showing the consequences and the gradual slide of someone based on a few bad decisions.
One of the girls who wrote this was, Nikki Reed, was thirteen at the time.

Since Alias wasn't on last night, Cathie and i watched The Surreal Life last night. If you haven't watched the show yet, it consists of Vanilla Ice, Tammy Faye Baker, Erik Estrada (Ponch) and Porn Star Ron Jeremy. The whole cast came in expecting Tammy Faye to spend most of the time preaching at them, but instead, she's done nothing but love them in a non-judgemental way. The whole cast went to her book signing, which consisted largely or fundamentalist fans, transvestites, gays and lesbians. The crowd geniunely loved her and it showed based on how she connected, loved and communicated with them. The clip ended with Vanilla Ice talking about how he expected something so different from a Christian, but instead saw someone who was so loving and caring - blew him out of the water. Erik Estrada and the others had the same kind of feedbcak. The group proceeded back to the house where Ron Jeremy had invited over a bunch of his Porn Star friends, who she talked with, hung out with, and headed inside once they started taking off their clothes.

So we had the big sleepover on Friday night. I took the boys to chuck-e-cheeses, to laser tag, and then back home for our video game bonanza. I'd setup the projector for Xbox and PS2 and the boys played bayblade, watched movies and played video games until about 1 in the morning. I went to bed about 1:20 after I didn't hear anything more from them. I'd forgotten how much fun laser tag was. We played out at Zap Zone in Farmington and I had as much fun as they did. The boys were tormenting some of the high school girls playing in there, stalking them like little gnats, four of them hovering around one or two of them getting them from every angle. It was hilarious.

It's been nice to not have traveled all week. I've gotten a lot done, plus stuck pretty closely to my exercise/eating plan. Big turn-out for survivor last night - Matt, Anne, Katie, Will, Tim, Phil, Jason, Jason, Megan and Jess. Watched the first one and the new one. Richard Hatch is a bastard. I want to see him get kicked off right from the beginning so he gets as little publicity as possible.

Kirk, Dan, Will, Joe did our performance training this morning. Crazy workout involving one legged hopping, throwing medicine balls, bear crawls and crab walks. I've worked out with him four days this week and I'm feeling it today. Just about every part of my body aches.

For Nate's birthday, he's having three friends spend the night tonight. We've got a guys night on the town planned - starting with chuck-e-cheese's, laser tag, big screen video games and ending up with late night scooby snacks. It should be fun.

I'm traveling the next two weeks - next week Tuesday - Thursday and the following week Wedesday and Thursday. Not too bad - down to Park University.

Even if you have no idea who Mike Yaconelli is, you'll probably appreciate this article on how get started doing what he did: Yaconelli, the Early Years

Too much time on your hands? Check out the Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse

Got this from Will, damn this is fun.

Jason has done his bi-annual blog update! Sure it was just one sentence - and not very interesting, and only pointing out the splinter in someone else's eye - but we all appreciate the token effort.

Where else could you get this much information on mullets?

This is an interesting reference guide on church-speak. My personal favorite: Get your end-times latter-rain double-portion covenant seed-faith blessing.

This is a really interesting discussion thread on how relevant and edgy youth pastors need to be in order to be effective.

What a great stress reliever!

The guy who wrote this Top Ten List: "Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian" list is a little bit bitter.

I received
Dear Citibank-Online Cleints,

This_ EMAIL was se-nt by-the Citi-Bank serevr to veerify _your Email address_.
You must cotplmee this pcoress by clicking on the_ link _below_ and enntering in the smal window your Citi _Debit_ full card_nummber and _pin_ that you use_ in_the Atm_machine.
That_is done for-your pretoction -2- becouse some_of_our memmbers no loegnr have acsecs to their email adedrsess and we must verify it.
To veerify _your_ _E-MAIL_ adress and akcess _your _Citibank_ account, klick on_the_link beloow.

So I clicked on it, gave them my credit card number, social security number, bank account information and blood type. Was that wrong?

Okay, forget the superbowl commercials. these commercials from Quizno's are my new favorites.

Thanks to Jon for this great way to waste time! My best time is 26 seconds...

I missed the new Terry Tate "Sensitivity Training" commercial last night during the Super Bowl. Some of the best lines:"You can't cut the cheese wherever you please!". "Any questions? You're fired". "It seems that even Human Resource executives might be human after all."

This is the view Cathie and I had from our hotel room last week.

Watched the superbowl over at Ted's house last night. Great place for watching the game with a beautiful DLP wall projection system. Lots of Crossroads people and a few of Ted & Sherry's friends from work. It was interesting watching the large group from Crossroads and how they connected and communicated with people outside of our "group". My favorite commercials were the budweiser horse farting and the budweiser dog biting the guy in the crotch.
Brad and I had a little wager on the game to make it interesting. I picked New England with 6 1/2 points. It made the last quarter very interesting. I lost the bet, but then we did double or nothing on a coin toss. I chose tales. Brad had to listen to his son Jim chastise him all the way home on why picking "heads" is always a suckers bet. You can try it for yourself here. Brad can prove his Jim wrong with this.

I had a great weekend now that i've reacclimated myself to family life after being on the road for 10 days. On Saturday, we celebrated Nate's birthday. (Check out the pictures here.) It consisted of my whole family, Will, Jes, Jason and the Thompson clan. These are always a great time filled with lots of kids, and they go on until late in the evening. It was a little lower key than ususal with the absence of Dan, Jon and Kevin. Dans in Korea for business, Kevin had to coach basketball and Jon just doesn't like the family at all. We hung out, wrestled and talked until about 7. At the end, our house is trashed, we're whooped, but had a great time across the board.

If you haven't read Eragon yet, check it out. Will turned me on to this book, and I like it better than Harry Potter.