Stuck Tourney Challenge 2009

Have some fun, and win a sweet prize package from Stuck in the Middle!

Get in on the excitement of this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Compete against Stuck friends, staff, speakers and artists as you fill out a bracket and earn points for every correct pick! Come out on top and you could win $10,000 from ESPN. Best of all, it’s free to play and win.

Get in the action now:
http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/group?groupID=75016

Group: Stuck Bracket Challenge
Password: stuck

Good luck, and have fun!!

AWOL blogger and 24 kids in a bug

I’ve been away for a few weeks but am finally working on a couple of new posts. In the meantime, here’s a couple of great videos from my buddy Andy Jack. These videos remind me of why I love working with middle school students!

As a side note, listen to the voice doing the countdown in the second video. I’m pretty sure that’s Andy’s voice I hear saying “5…3…3…2…1″.

I know the ordination work took up a good chunk of your brain buddy…but I’m pretty sure there should be a “4″ in there!

American Idol blew it!

Last week was possibly the only time I’ve actually been excited to watch American Idol. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching Simon consistently be the voice of reason on the show (is there anybody else out there who feels like he says exactly what you’re thinking 99% of the time? No…just me? Scary…) Typically I can’t stand the options that they give the contestants to pick their songs from, but last week was different…last week they had the rock and roll hall of fame! My mind started racing to think of all the great songs that they could pull out for the show. If they can turn crap like “Always Be My Baby” into a pretty decent song, then just think what they can do with this!

Unfortunately, I was about as bummed out as I could be. The songs they chose were about as lame, tame and boring as they could be. Even rocker David Cook was completely forgettable. I don’t know what happened, but my mind has been thinking this past week about “what might have been”.

Here are the songs from the rock and roll hall of fame that I would have picked for the contestants (in order with my favorites first). Let me know how right or wrong you think I am in the comments below…come on…I dare you!

David Archuleta
The Police- Message In A Bottle (John Mayer version)
Elton John- Tiny Dancer
John Mellancamp- Small Town

Syesha Mercado
REM- Losing My Religion (similar to what Ryan Star did on Rock Star: Supernova)
Prince – When Doves Cry (Quindon Tarver version from Romeo and Juliet soundtrack)
Janis Joplin- Piece of my heart (Melissa Etheridge version)

David Cook
U2- Pride (In the Name of Love)
The Rolling Stones- Paint it Black (Gob version)
AC/DC- You Shook me All Night Long
Michael Jackson- Thriller (I’ve got an arrangement in my head that I think would be awesome…now if I just had an inch of talent to actually get it out of my head!)

Jason Castro
Tom Petty- Free Fallin’ (you can’t tell me he wouldn’t have brought the house down with this!)
Fleetwood Mac- Landslide (similar to the version Billy Corgan did on Pisces Iscariot)
James Taylor- Fire and Rain

Ok, so that’s two posts in a row about a show I don’t really care about. Time to move along! I’m working on some thoughts from the recent Jr. High Summit I attended in Chicago. I’ve also got some stuff from my recent trips to California and Florida to promote our upcoming events there. Of course, I could just blog about Hannah Montana or Lindsey Lohan and watch my traffic skyrocket…but I think not!

David Cook, the KC Chiefs Cheerleaders and Aiden

Yesterday we drove up to Blue Springs Missouri so that Jill could go to a mother’s day banquet with her mom and sisters. She took Maddy and Bella with her, so Aiden and I hung out together for the afternoon and evening. We heard that David Cook from American Idol was in town for a parade and mini-concert (Blue Springs is his home town), so we shot over to the high school to see what was going on. There were tons of people there (over 10,000), but somehow we ended up in the backstage area where all the “important” people were coming in and out. We sat on the corner of a sidewalk and watched David sing “Always Be My Baby”, “There Goes My Hero” and “Living on a Prayer”.

After the mini-concert, Aiden and I got to “meet” David and he walked by with his entourage. He was cool, but was in a big hurry to get to his Ford Expedition limo.

As we were walking past his limo to leave, we heard a commotion on the other side and walked over to see what was going on. David had his head (and most of his upper body) sticking out of the limo window, and he was being mobbed by the Kansas City Chief’s cheerleaders. The cheerleaders were giddy to meet David, and he was laughing and saying to the few of us standing around “Yeah, it’s tough to be an American Idol…this is hard work!” The cheerleaders were posing for pictures with David and one of them motioned for Aiden to come get in the picture with them, but he was frozen. I tried to encourage him to go up, but he didn’t want anything to do with it. All he really wanted to do was invite David to go see Iron Man with us. So, I went ahead and took the picture, then I added Aiden in with Photoshop. So here’s what it might have looked like…

But here’s the closest Aiden would actually get…

Anyway, we had a great “boy’s night out” together. We went and saw Iron Man together (loved it just as much the 2nd time!), then we went to Burger King for dinner. A fun night out for the Meade boys!

Oh, and here’s a picture of Aiden getting his hair cut by Adam Sandler as “Zohan”…Aiden asked me to take it and put it on my blog!

I Am Iron Man

Jill and I went with my brother Brian and my sister in-law Melissa to see a sneak preview of Iron Man last week. They scored us some balcony tickets, which is always a cool treat too! I went into the movie with a basic understanding of who Iron Man is, though I was never really into the comics. What really got me stoked about this movie was that Jon Favreau was directing it (the guy is awesome…he wrote and starred in Swingers and he directed Elf), Robert Downey Jr. was starring in it, and Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow were in the supporting cast. That’s a pretty serious line-up for a comic book movie…and having Downey Jr. adds some real gravitas to the flick.

So, what did I think? In the words of comic book guy from The Simpson’s…”Best comic book movie ever!”

From the beginning this is a movie that was done right. I already mentioned the amazing director and cast, but you also have to realize that this movie represents an industry first. This is the first time that a comic’s publisher is making their own comic book movie. Before, the publisher had major say in what was happening, but ultimately it was a studio picture. This movie is different. Sure, the studio (Paramount) is selling the movie, but this is 100% Marvel Comic’s baby. Marvel ponied up major amounts of money to mke this movie and the upcoming Incredible Hulk movie, so they have a lot riding on them being a success.

Because they did it on their own, they were able to dance around several of the shortcomings of recent comic book movies. No overly cheesy dialogue, no stupid jokes that come out of character and out of synch with the rest of the story. The development and the pacing of the story feels right on (although some thought it was a bit slow in the “becoming Iron Man” part, I thought it was perfect). Another cool thing about this movie (as opposed to Spiderman, X-Men, etc.) is that it takes place in the Marvel Comics universe. There are references to The Mandarin and the 10 rings organization, there’s a hilarious one-liner reference to War Machine that generated a huge response from the theatre I was in, SHIELD is there, and so is a certain “person” who pops up and sets the stage for some amazing things to come in the future. Here’s a hint: Stay until the end of the credits. I’ve also heard that Downey Jr. will make a cameo appearance as Tony Stark in the upcoming Hulk movie, blazing the trail for an Avengers movie (scheduled for 2010).

Combine all of this with the fact that Iron Man’s tech is about as cool as it gets, and you’ve got one awesome movie. The summer is officially here…and I’m realizing more than ever what a big geek I am. Oh well, at least for Jill’s sake I wasn’t the guy dressed as Iron (tin foil) Man or Cardboard Monger…it could always be worse right?

Borat in Kansas

I saw this video on Ainitcoolnews.com this morning, and then saw more info on my buddy Kirk’s blog. It seems that Sacha Baron Cohen (the actor who played Borat) was in Wichita recently shooting a new movie as a character called “Bruno”, a gay Austrailian fashion reporter. They shot some really bizarre stuff at the Wichita airport, then tried to crash an Easter program at Central Community Church, where my buddy Zac used to lead worship. Apparently they were posing as a foreign film group shooting a documentary, and had received permission to shoot at both the airport and the church. They even went so far as to get the church to solicit waivers from the people in attendance at the service, including personal information and social security numbers. Eventually Cohen and crew were stopped in the lobby of the church as they were covering security cameras and donning “biblical costumes with lots of chains”. No idea what they were planning, but I would have LOVED to have seen it in person! For more information, here are some links:

The KAKE TV station news story.

A blog post from a Central Community Church staffer.

The Aintitcoolnews post.

My buddy Kirk’s blog post about it.

And here’s the video from the airport…like I said, very STRANGE!

Ninja Parade Goes Unnoticed

Hilarious…thanks Onion!

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

ht to Josh Tryon