Dave Gibbons on Third Culture

Here’s the video I was talking about in my previous post.

Thanks to Chris Fann for the video.

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Blackberry vs. Moto Q… I need phone help!!!

Ok…so here’s the deal. I have a Motorola Q phone right now, and I like it OK. I use google to manage my stuckinthemiddle.com email accounts, so everything that I do email wise is through gmail. I am accessing my email currently through the web browser on my Q, but would like to switch it over and figure out how to get “push” email through my phone. I also use google calendar right now to manage my appointments, but would be willing to switch over to any program that can sync with my laptop and my phone.

So here’s my question…does anyone out there have a solid recommendation for a phone that can do push email (with gmail) and has a calendar that I can sync with my laptop and phone? I’ve looked into Blackberry phones, but I’m just not sold yet.

Or better yet, does anyone know how to set this up on the Q? I’ve tried to recruit help from the Sprint store with no luck, and I haven’t been able to get it working right on my own either.

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!

Airport Blues…

The good news: I made it to the airport early enough to get that exit row seat I wanted.

The bad news: I’m sitting in the airplane right now, waiting on the runway while we continue to be delayed over and over again. It seems that there’s too much wind in Chicago (imagine that), and incoming flights are getting delayed and cancelled. We started out with a 5:55 PM flight, which was then delayed until 6:20. They loaded us on the plane at 6:20, then we sat at the gate until about 6:50. At that time we taxied out on the runway, where we have been ever since. It’s now almost 7:30, and they expect us to take off sometime around 8PM.

The worst thing is, about 1/3 of the people on this flight went through the exact same thing last night…before their flight was ultimately cancelled and they had to go get hotel rooms for the night. American Airlines called it an “Act of God” and didn’t comp any hotels or food. Fun stuff!

Here’s to hoping that I get out of here tonight. Until then, in a sick way this is kind of funny. People on here are really ticked off, which makes this flight something of a social experiment (kind of like “Beauty and the Geek”, except without the beauties and with a lot of older people and screaming babies!).

The Presidential Race…

is getting pretty exciting. I didn’t think I would be into it at all, but now I’m finding myself surprisingly pleased with two candidates from two different parties. I really like what I’m hearing and seeing from both John McCain and Barack Obama.

Oh yeah, and I think I might be sick if I get one more forwarded email explaining why Obama is the anti-Christ or a muslim extremist. Coincidently, those emails are typically from the same people who thought that the DaVinci Code and Golden Compass were going to wipe Christianity off the map too. Good to know that when common sense and grace fail us, we always have bigotry and slander to fall back on.

Don’t look at this before bedtime…

It’s about time somebody figured this out…I’ve been preaching this for years.

h/t to TV’s Craig Ferguson.

Best of 2007: Movies

My Favorites:

Once- The BEST movie of 2007, and now one of my all time favorite movies. I can’t believe that I waited until it was out on DVD to watch this one. If you love music and are cool with a good love story, you’re going to flip over this movie. This is a musical, but it’s the first musical I’ve ever seen where I was literally blown away by every song. This movie is beautiful in the way that it captures the non-traditional romance between its amazing lead characters, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Both deliver flawless acting performances, and they also wrote and performed all but one of the songs in the movie. Every exchange between them feels like an intimate look into a life and situation that you’d actually give a care about. Without giving it away, the ending of the movie is unexpected, non-traditional and (what’s the word I’m looking for here) … blissful. As a wannabe musician, I loved a scene in the movie where the band and engineer take their near finished product out to car test it through crappy speakers. It brought back memories of driving around town eating Taco Bell and car testing the only CD I’ve ever been a part of. Fun times: and an incredible, beautiful, meaningful movie.

Stardust- My second favorite movie of the year. A great story with lots of fun, and it’s pretty kid friendly.

Simpson’s Movie- 100% pure guilty pleasure, and worth every second of it. Now if I could just stop singing “spider-pig, spider-pig, does whatever a spider-pig does.”

Hot Fuzz- Anything with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) is a must-see in my books, and this one was no different. A little slow in the middle, but the third act shoot-out made it all worth it.

Runners Up:

August Rush- Beautiful but a tad too much at times.

300- Amazing visual effects, but a tad too much at times.

I Am Legend- The visual effects actually turned me off to this movie, and the ending wasn’t my favorite, but it makes the list on the strength of an amazing performance by Will Smith.

Shoot Em Up- Guilty pleasure #1

Knocked Up- Hilarious, but also a tad too much at times.

Haven’t seen yet but really want to:

Lars and the Real Girl
Black Sheep (not the Chris Farley movie)
Juno
Across the Universe
No Country for Old Men

Disappointments:

Pirates 3, Shrek 3 and Spiderman 3- none of them were totally awful, but none seemed to live up to the hype or to the standard set by the previous movies. Though Pinoccio and Gingerbread Man were awesome in Shrek.

1408- Great setup, horrible ending.

Ocean’s 13- I LOVED the first one, thought #2 was ok, but this one just lost me. It felt like the cast was having a great time with the movie, but I wasn’t feeling it.

28 Weeks Later- Not anywhere near as good as 28 Days Later was, but it was a blast seeing this with some junior high ministry friends (and watching some jump more than others!). Oh yeah, and there was a cool manhunt going on outside of the theatre after we left…but it was still a pretty lame movie.