Good People

I was browsing facebook today and I came across a post on someone's wall and I was like "who's this joker with his rectangular-framed glasses and goatee/beard facial-weasel". Then I realized that I'm not the twelve year old with a bowl cut that I see in my mind's eye. I'm a 22 year old with rectangular-framed glasses and a goatee/beard facial-weasel. Huh...

Just My Shoes

When I got home Friday from school to an empty house I was ecstatic. I cranked some tunes, grabbed a trashbag and the vacuum and attacked Brad's former room with hurricane force. After vacuuming and dancing around in my underwears for a couple hours I realized that I was alone. No Brad. No Leroy. It was Friday night, it was pouring rain, and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself.

I woke up about 2 hours later when Vivian called and luckily at the same time I got a voicemail from Jose saying that he wanted to come down for the day on Saturday.

We ended up going to the Cave of the Winds to do a lantern tour. It was a good day. It would have been a great day if we could have just explored the caves by ourselves, but at least with the guide there we got to hear about what sort of a life someone has who violates Native American superstitious taboos and keeps a mummy in the cave he found. Afterwards we went for pizza at Poor Richard's (a combination bookstore, pizza-place, toy store, and chocolate and wine bar). Emily Dickinson's poetic wiles finally got the best of me and bought her collected poems. That should tide me over for the dateless couple months that lie ahead of me. Good pie, good scenery, good company, and good conversation, not a bad way to complete my goal for the week.

But now Brad and Leroy are gone, Jose left this afternoon after lunch at Chipotle and he'll be headed home after this upcoming work week, and BoyScout will hopefully be visiting the Springs this Wednesday and then heading back to Hillsdale. There go all my summer buddies. Time to get friendly with the locals.

On that note:

Jose and I did the Sunday circuit today, attending, once again, both Divine Redeemer Catholic Church and New Life. Divine Redeemer was pretty good today: a nice mix of music, a homily about being patient which included a rebuke against those people who just walk out after Communion, and a special presentation from a couple who recently moved here from, of all places, Michigan. New Life also had a special guest, also from Michigan. The music was a bit too fast for me today and the sermon a bit too slow, but that's the way it is.

So, here's the rub: New Life small groups (there are about 100 different groups to join, not kidding) start next Sunday and Divine Redeemer's RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) classes start Sept. 6th, and, being the over-achiever that I am, I want to do both. Again, I'll be going to RCIA for the Trinity and to small group for the fellowship, but twice as much church, that can't be wrong, right? Let me know your thoughts on this. I just don't know if you can cheat on Jesus with Jesus. I mean if you were to have your wife...okay, we shouldn't make an analogy of that.

It occurred to me today as I left the sanctuary at Divine Redeemer and looked at their "max. capacity" sign that at some point this church placed an order for 8,419 interlocking chairs.

P.S. Who wants to go see this movie with me?

And the winner is.....

Time to announce the winner of last week's celebratory contest.

Here's the original photo:
And the winning caption:

"Instead of going to the hospital and having the big staff and serpent heal the sick and weary the EMTs decided it was faster to have the messiah cure them."

Thanks Quinn. Hit me up at zogood@gmail.com with your address and your wonderful prize will be on it's way.

Also, there are couple honorable mentions:

First, from Michael, a photoshopped version entitled "You Shall Not Pass":


And secondly, Varduga with his Onion-esque entry:

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO. PATRICK KILCHERMANN, ASSOCIATED PRESS (14:00MST, 8/12/08): Barrack Obama campaign officer Mr. David Hathaway finally succumbed to malnutrition today, after trying to bring to the forefront of the public's eye, one of the biggest issues of Senator Obama's campaign: Hunger.

"It just doesn't seem fair to me, that if a person in America doesn't feel like getting up to fix something to eat, she or he isn't spoon fed by the government," Mr. Hathaway was quoted as saying.

"When I realized that nobody was outraged by this other than me, It occurred to me that the public at large probably doesn't even KNOW this. And that is why I am doing this- I want everyone to see the kind of country you live in. I want to show America the kind of government the U.N. gave us."

Mr. Hathaway refused pleas from his family and friends to seek medical attention, even as he grew too weak to get up from the couch that he sat upon. All except his fellow Obama campaign officers- people like Jessica Rousch.

Prior to Hathaway's death, Ms. Rousch told us, "Um, I think it's awesome what he's doing. I don't 'member how old I was when I found out that not ev'ryone has their meals fed to them. But I think it was when I moved out of my parents house when I was 35 or 40. I mean, what's the point of even having a government if they aren't going to feed you?"

Hathaway's death is seen by his loved ones as an unnecessary tragedy in the war on hunger. David was 24 years old, and was a recent graduate from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a bachelor's degree in Fecal Arts.


Thanks for participating everyone and be sure to start spreading the good word about The Good Word and be prepared for an AMAZING prize for the next contest, which will begin the day after our first 100-visit day.

P.S. Jose is in town and tomorrow he and I will be double-dipping, be prepared...

August and Everything After

The title of this post isn't technically the name of a song, but it is the title of the best CD ever made so I'm going to count it. And since I just got the call that Brad and Leroy are back in the state of abundant life I figured I would celebrate their journey by making "Omaha," one of my favorites from August and Everything After, the song of the day.

August Runs: Unless "August Rush" refers to some horrible gastric infection which results in chronic diarrhea, I don't get it.

I already mentioned August Rush once this week but since I've had to go another week without seeing Mama Mia, you're going to have to get the full lecture.


Movie Review #4

AUGUST RUSH - Dianna's Pick (Sorry that I have to pin this one on somebody, but it might as well be Brad's Colombian Princess).

We knew going in that August Rush was supposed to be "a little girly," but when has that ever deterred my taste in movies, music or fashion? Once the movie started though we realized that by "girly" they didn't mean it had Hugh Grant in it or that The Cranberries and Enya supplied over half the soundtrack. What they actually meant by "girly" was that the people who wrote this movie have a much lower IQ than the rest of society.

August Rush is about a boy who can "hear the music" and despite growing up at an orphanage in New York he can "hear" his parents, who since they were so cruelly ripped away from each other by Keri Russell's dad have given up music and moved to San Fransico and Chicago. Not only was the writing atrocious (they actually used the line "run August, run"), but the plot was either under-developed or overdone, like when a baby spends 11 months in the womb. Not only did characters enter and leave the plot without any real explanation (the kid's best friend at the orphanage, the bully, the little black girl, the caseworker), but in the time it took August to be born without his mother's knowledge and age 11 years his parents didn't age a bit. They didn't even change their clothes or get a haircut. Other especially believable moments include: Robinwilliamsinacowboyhat attacking a New York City police officer in the presence of about a dozen other cops and living to tell about it, and a truck driver picking up August outside of NYC, driving him to Times Square, and then leaving him there alone so that the caseworker could pick him up in a couple hours.

The only four characters that made it through the whole movie without mysteriously disappearing were the kid, his parents, and RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat. Now, in your average movie, novel, short story, children's TV show, Johnny Cash song, etc. there is an element called "rising and falling action". This is generally the reason you watch, read, listen to, any given piece of media - it's the plot, the character arc, the heroic rise, the tragic fall, the deus ex machina. In August Rush, however, the plot looked something like this:As you can see there is no part of this graph that looks at all interesting. The yellow line, representing August, pretty much just slowly goes up as he goes from knowing for sure that his parents love him to leaving the orphanage, becoming a musician, attending Julliard, and finally performing his rhapsody in Central Park. His parents, who haven't aged, changed occupation, or thought about anything but each other in 11 years, yet seem not to have discovered the internet, phonebook or any other way they might contact each other, both, through a series of mundane events, go to New York and find each other and their long lost son. But, that's all to be expected of a Disneyesque movie.

RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat, however, had potential. He was there on the night when August's parents met and made their musical little baby (probably why Disney didn't pick this one up), and he was there for August's rise to prominence in the New York City music scene. Something should have happened there. Maybe he was a real jerk because he too was orphaned and August could have showed him hope and taught him something wonderful about the nature of music. Maybe August's playing could have made RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat examine himself and learn to love music the way he did when he was playing his harmonica on that streetcorner 11 years ago. But, RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat had pretty much just as flat of a story arc as anyone else. One time he got mad and one time he was real nice, but that's about it.

Overall the music was pretty good (except the time he played the organ, that was a waste), but there wasn't a single minute of the movie where I didn't want to just stop watching. August earns, and I truly mean earns, a D+ from me.

Wow, that was harsh...

LATER TODAY: CONTEST WINNER!!!!

UPDATE!

There is no internet at my house.

Tomorrow I'll head to a coffee shop early and get tomorrow's post up along with the contest winner.

Also, all text on the blog should be visible now. I hope that problem wasn't happening all day. Thanks Pat for letting me know about it.

Everyone: In the future when something doesn't look right, just feel free to e-mail me at zogood@gmail.com and I'll fix it. Blogger is a little temperamental, I won't be using it much longer.

Good Riddance

Today is Brad and Leroy's last day in the Springs. As soon as Leroy gets out of work they'll be loading up his car and drag-racing back across the country to the beauty and simplicity of "the wolverine state". Lucky punks.

It's not what you do... it's who you beat.

I've always said that it's not what you do, it's who you beat. The Olympics are the perfect proof of this. Why would it ever matter that some guy could run real fast, stab a stick into the ground, and use it to throw himself over a tree-branch? Why would it ever matter that someone would string up a couple of rings from the ceiling and twirl around on them? No one would ever watch these things... that is unless it was to see someone from our country beat someone from Russia at doing these things. Anyone ever watched curling?

Colorado has been hard on us this summer. Here are some play-by-plays of our toughest match-ups and a summary of how we fared against each opponent.

Jenn from Leasing

The Opponent: A 98lb blonde leasing agent. Our first and greatest enemy. Not only was she unhelpful and rude during our housing search, but she made us sleep on the ground in a state park without a tent for four days after our application was approved so that the apartment could be cleaned. When we arrived in CSprings after our involuntary camping trip, which was terminated early due to a snow-storm, we showed up at Sunflower Inc. to sign our lease only to find that Jenn had forgotten that we made an appointment with her and had taken the day off. When we moved in we discovered that not only had the apartment not been cleaned, but we had to move the refrigerator and stove from the center of the kitchen to cover the filth that she was supposed to take care of while we were cooking Ramen over a fire in bear country.
The Battle: After vowing revenge we only actually saw Jenn once this summer, in a bar downtown. But, because the alcohol was so watered down (thanks again CSprings) Brad never got up the courage to go hit on her (the plan was that he would date her for awhile, marry her, divorce her and ruin her life).
The Winner: Jenn. Not only is my apartment still unfurnished and slowly falling apart but my utility bill quadrupled between the month of June and the month of July.

Downtown

The Opponent: We decided on the apartment we have because we wanted to be near downtown. It appeared to be exciting and friendly, filled with quaint little shops, bookstores and restaurants. Turns out the place was entirely out of our league. Not only was everything expensive but the people were rude and sometimes naked (one night we were passed by three, seemingly unrelated bike-streakers). The only place that was really on our side was The Corner Cafe which, as I've said before, had the best food and the best people the Springs has to offer.
The Battle: We did a lap around downtown almost every night. Never once were we ever engaged in conversation by someone who wasn't asking for change or telling us to vote for Obama.
The Winner: Brad and Zach. We learned our lesson about downtown early on, we defeated Panino's in open combat, we got in good with Uncle Wilbur and the rest of the locals, and never gave CSprings an inch.

Dumpster Divers

The Opponent: The homeless of CSprings come in many varieties. There's the faker, who you see getting out his car before he goes to his begging corner. The backpacker, who seems to be voluntarily homeless and is just passing through. The oldtimer, who is pretty well set up with either a grocery cart or several double-reinforced plastic bags. The prophet, who gives sermons in the park or is just generally always mumbling to himself. And finally, the dumpster diver.
The Battle: We never did give in and empty our pockets, but I did give a guy a piece of pie once.
The Winner: Dumpster Divers. We thought we had the upper hand until a dumpster diver (after asking if he could have my bike a couple days before) cut the chain and stole it. He'll make about $7 selling it as scrap metal. I hope those bolt-cutters cost him....

Women of The Springs

The Opponent: Armpit hair
The Winner: No one wins with armpit hair. Draw.

Employment and Cost of Living

The Opponents: The Corner Cafe, The Cleaning Authority, and College Pro Painters.
The Battle: The Corner Cafe treated me very well. It fed me, clothed me, and loved me as its own. But at $300 per paycheck my earnings were only about 75% of my expenses every month, which was okay. I knew what I was in for. Leroy had a pretty good set up with the Vinyards and The Cleaning Authority. He worked for the family business (maybe not as many hours as he wanted), lived in the family's bunkhouse (read: shack) and, on top of that, they fed him. The downside was that The Leroy Shack was about 100 miles from anywhere and between gas costs, flying home for a wedding, and eating out just enough to break the monotony, he'll probably break even. Brad, however, got the shirt ripped off his back by College Pro. They took a couple weeks to hire him, paid him unfairly, forced him to wear white pants (a fashion sin), and ultimately laid him off with three weeks left in his summer. Despite living as frugal of a life as possible: surviving on only hotdogs and dreams, while relying on hulu.com for entertainment, Brad won't only be down the cash that he lost not working all that time, but also his dignity.
The Winner: Poverty.

As we sit here, sipping our victory Jones Soda (blue bubble gum if you must know) that we've been saving from the travel package Mike and Maggie's put together for our trip out here, we realize that we were saving them all summer for a time when we would have something to celebrate. I guess Brad heading back to the land of trees and freshwater is as good of an occasion as any.

You win Colorado. But know that no one would care about your hollow victory if you weren't beating Michigan's finest.

It's been a long summer. A long, sweaty, sticky summer

P.S. Thanks for the cookie Jose.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I'm not obese. For my height I'm probably technically overweight, but most would call me "cuddly". Or at least most people in Michigan would call me that. But, unfortunately, I've moved to the most ripped state in the Union, from, by far, the most pleasantly plump. While I can't back that up with authoritative data, I can say that living amongst these people, despite their boisterous (doesn't that word have to do with sound?) armpit hair, I've developed a bit of a complex. So the other night Brad and I went for a run.

I haven't run regularly since my internship at Grace Church (where running was mandatory), but when I was doing it I loved it. We ran as a group three days a week and in the course of the summer I went from being the second slowest person to the second fastest of the eight interns. I was even running on days when we didn't have mandatory runs. I even started running twice a day about half way through the summer. Then, one Saturday, I decided I was going to do a homemade half-marathon. I had run 10 and 1/2 miles during my long run the week before that and I knew that I could do it. The only problem was that during the course of my run, which took a couple hours, the temperature rose from low 80's to the high 90's. I got dehydrated, pulled my ACL and haven't really run since.

Today, as sore as I was from running with Brad, I got up at 5:45 and ran again. Two miles has never seemed so long. But I did it.

Since mid-July I've been waking up five minutes earlier every day. My goal is to be able to execute a morning routine which includes running, showering, shaving, ironing, making a lunch, and arriving at the school before 7am to get done whatever I need to do for that day. 5:45 is definitely not early enough. I'm guess it's going to be more like 5:00AM.

What's my point?

To function in this world, to be an effective teacher, doctor, pastor, construction worker, nurse, artist, writer, whatever, you need to be a little bit better today than you were yesterday. But, like most, I'm seldom on track. Sure I get a couple boosts of resolution during the year: New Year's, first day of school, my birthday, etc. but I've never been able to really succeed at progressing unless it was in a situation like running with the interns at Grace Church. With the interns I always had someone to measure myself by, someone to compete with, and 8 someones (including our running coach) to keep me accountable.

My goal with this blog is 50% communication (of ideas and thoughts with people I care about), 50% blatant and shameless self-promotion, and 50% just loving to be able to stay in contact with the people who read it. People who I otherwise might talk to once a month, once a year, maybe once again before I die.

So, today's 'reader response" isn't for people who are witty, well-read, or especially into some niche of pop-culture. It's for whoever wants to stay in contact with me in a meaningful way and do something today about making yourself a little better today than you were yesterday.

If you'd like to do this (and if you're reading this I would like you do this), just leave a comment telling me one goal you have for today, one goal you have for the week (before next Thursday) and one goal you have before New Year's.

Here are mine:
Today: I will have a week's worth of lesson plans done for at least one of my English sections.
This Week: I will hang out with someone this weekend, despite the fact that Brad and Leroy leave tomorrow (I have made approximately zero friends in this land of 5% body fat).
Before January: I will be able to run the 10.5 miles I was able to run before I attempted that half marathon two years ago.

I'll keep you guys updated. Do the same for me. And if you don't want to post your goals for the whole wide web to see. E-mail me at zogood@gmail.com


Oh, and if you really want to do something to improve your life, never watch August Rush.

Everything You Know Is Wrong

UPDATE: Sorry dudes, I didn't change the code for the playlist earlier. It's fixed now.

Turns out if you like pop music, it's only because you like disco...

Debunk the Funk: A look at how Pop ripped off Disco and Will Smith ripped off everybody.

Madonna vs. Abba



Gym Class Heroes vs. Legitimate Success

Turns out that not only do they need the lead singer of Fall Out Boy to break the top 40, but these guys also have hijacked the hooks from some forgotten pop hits.





Will Smith vs. Everybody

If you take a close look, or just happen to listen to a lot of Soul Train, you soon find out that the beats of the artist formerly known as The Fresh Prince are neither fresh nor kingly...

See if you can identify which of these golden oldies were ripped off and turned into which of Will Smith's biggest radio hits.

To compare these videos with any of the Will Smith versions just use the playlist on the sidebar which has been switched up completely today just for this post.

Sister Sledge - "He's The Greatest Dancer"

If you guessed "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" (how could you not?) you'd be right.

How about this one?
Patrice Rushen - "For-Me-Nots"

Yup, it's "Men in Black."

The Whispers - "The Beat Goes On"

That would be "Miami."

And finally...
Stevie Wonder - "I Wish"

At least he let Stevie Wonder in on the action and got to play the music he wrote and Will Smith sampled for the song "Wild, Wild West."

Of course we all know that "Just The Two Of Us" was a remake of a Grover Washington song and that "Will2k" was just Smith singing over "Rock the Casbah." But what you might not know is that he stole the lyrics to his eponymous tune too. Check it out.