News from the Great Beyond

Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer

A bit of a change of pace... heh.  There's something about Relient K that makes me smile, I think it reminds me of my high school and college addiction to One Bad Pig.  It's either that or their cover of the Charles in Charge theme song.

The Santa Man Cometh!

Christmas is in 21 days, are you ready? 

My plane tickets are purchased, but man, it's not easy to get in the holiday mindset at the moment.  On my road trip for Thanksgiving, I did hit up a few Christmas songs on my iPod, though, and Christmas music does help.

So, with the assistance of YouTube, I will endeavor to count down the days and inject a bit more holiday cheer on the blog here.  Today's offering is one that I found via The Anchoress a few months back.  Even though the song in itself isn't a Christmas carol, it reminds me of my high school Madrigal (which was nearly all Christmas music with the exception of a few medieval tunes).

Enjoy!

Narnia in Song

Another recurring discussion (in addition to Lord of the Rings) we had while Cherry and Noah were here was about the Chronicles of Narnia.  Whenever a movie based on a book is available, Cherry and her husband want Noah to read the book before he sees the movie, just so he'll have a clear imagination to see the story in his head as he reads without the director's vision of the characters and the action.  Most of the time when I compare any book and the movie based on the book, the book is the clear winner, anyway, even if the movie is good.

So having seen Prince Caspian, Noah was itching to re-read the book, and plow through some of the other Chronicles so he'd be ready for the movies as they are released.  I dug up my boxed set of the Chronicles so Noah could read them, and then decided to read them again myself - the stories are simple enough for children, but rich in symbolism and wisdom and worth re-reading often.  I read all of them while Cherry and Noah were visiting except for "The Last Battle", and last night I decided to pick it up after I finished another book I'd been reading.

The book reminded me, as it always does every time I've read it since the early 90's, of a song by Jacob's Trouble, which was based on the book... so this morning I had to look the song up on the web and see if I could find the lyrics, or a video, or something.  What I found was pretty cool - a blog by Jerry Davison, one of the members of Jacob's Trouble, and the writer of the song "Further Up and Further In", writing about his inspiration and thoughts about the song.

I also found a YouTube video of some guy covering the song (who it is I don't know, although Jerry Davison left a comment on the YouTube page for the video with compliments) - here for your enjoyment:

Memories and Haunting Songs

I've been loading my 3-disc CD player the last few days with CDs that I haven't listened to in ages... tonight a particularly haunting tune jumped out at me from the Lost Dogs CD "Little Red Riding Hood".

The song struck me because I've been hearing a lot here lately about the sovereignty of God.  The statement's been made several times that we shouldn't question God, and the book of Job seems to point to the uselessness of questioning God (as I've mentioned before)... but I've also heard it said many times by many people I respect that God is big enough to handle our questions and our anger and our doubts.  He knows we have them anyway, so why do we try to stifle them instead of opening up that dialog and letting Him speak?

So without further ado, I searched for a video of the song and found one recorded live at Cornerstone festival 2006 (oh, that makes me miss Cornerstone... sooooo many memories there including a Lost Dogs concert of my own):   

YouTube Strikes Again!

During my most recent trip to see my family, my mom was reminiscing about an old Spike Jones song that my dad used to sing quite frequently - I learned it from him as a child, and I'm not sure if she was amused or embarrassed that we'd hang out in our backyard swimming pool on weekends singing it loudly enough to be heard down the street.

Anyway, here's the really fun thing - Disney made a cartoon of it back in the 1940's.  Here for your viewing pleasure:  Der Fuhrer's Face!

Good Grief...

EVERYTHING is on YouTube.

I was just thinking of this old Gilligan's Island episode the other day... and here it is:

Are my old tap dancing recitals online too?  *scared*

Anyone remember this?

Having fun with YouTube... Just remembering how much I loved Schoolhouse Rock as a kid.  For your viewing pleasure...

Sung to the Tune of... Monkey

So I'm listening to my not-quite-brand-new iPod, my Christmas present from my darling Hubby-head, and the song "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" by U2 comes on... and I have a flashback - to my senior year of college, and something that my good friend Pablo will remember well.

I had done a year-long internship during my sophomore spring semester and junior fall semester at our local top 40 FM and its affiliated AM radio station, doing miscellaneous news reporting and some anchoring.  During that time, I'd made friends with some of the DJ's - one or two of them were also classmates in the Radio/TV program at Southern Illinois University.  I stayed close to them after my internship was over, so I had access to the station and occasionally would go visit the DJs while they were on-air.  A couple of times they let me borrow the carts with some of the songs that weren't in heavy rotation and hole up in the production studio to make a mix tape. 

Sometimes, when bored in the late evenings or on weekends, Pablo and I would drop by and hang out in the studio.  One of those times, we started playing a fun little game while looking at the wall of labelled song cartridges.  We'd start combining song titles in odd ways.  And then, we ran across it - the ultimate song for this game:  George Michael's "Monkey".  We started lopping off the last word of each song title and replacing it with "Monkey", with hilarious results.

The best combination of that game, hands down, came from the U2 song currently in heavy rotation.  I mean, who wouldn't have a giggle fit at 1:00 in the morning when someone shouts out "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Monkey"?

Anyone else want to try?  Or did you have any fun musical games you used to play?

I Could Cheat...

... and reset the date for this post to yesterday some time, but he probably checked already and would know I was bluffing.  So I'll own up to my forgetfulness and apologize profusely when I offer belated birthday wishes to my good friend (and frequent commenter) Tom Henderson...

I realized it this morning, while our pastor was talking about the message he'd given at a conference yesterday and mentioned the symbolic/prophetic significance of the date - 9/3/2005.  I paid very little attention to what he said once the date struck me, because I realized that I'd intended to post birthday wishes for Tom - having done so for Paul and all.

Speaking of Paul (a.k.a. Pablo), I'm gonna have to explain the commenting process to him, the non-blog-initiated.  He sent me an e-mail full of responses to various posts that would have been rather amusing for y'all to read.  Part of the fun of reading blogs is sharing in the conversation, and sharing that conversation with the rest of the readers.  Sometimes it's more fun than the original post.

In any event, here's to Tom - with birthday hugs and fond memories.  I still have the guitar I snagged at the MegaLife Leadership Council year-end meeting, complete with Calvin & Hobbes taped to the guitar case.  I also have a 16" x 20" enlargement of a red-tinged photo of you and Cherry blowing bubbles by candlelight hanging over my fireplace.  In the extended entry, the poem that went along with that photo. 

Ahh, college days.  Life has changed so much since then, in so many ways for the better.  Still, I wouldn't trade those memories.  Here's hoping that we can all gather someday soon and make new ones with our respective families.

Until we meet again, Henderson... May you and your family be blessed in every way. 

You just HAD to know, didn't you?

Or maybe not.  But after this post, I'll bet some of you are curious about the story behind the "s*xually frustrated" association.

Back in high school or thereabouts (I was sheltered, I might have heard it sooner otherwise) I heard or read somewhere that chewing ice is a sign that you're s*xually frustrated.  Eating a big breakfast, by the same saying, meant you were s*xually satisfied.

I never used to eat breakfast anyway in those days.  Heh.

But I digress.  I told my friend Simone about this theory one day, and she (a virgin, and a confirmed ice-chewer) thought it was pretty amusing.  Even more amusing was the day we came across her 60-something-year-old grandmother sitting in the kitchen, crunching merrily away at a glass of ice.

"Grandma," Simone said (apparently without thinking first), "are you s*xually frustrated?"

Grandma, ostensibly lost in thought about something else, gave us a somewhat emphatic "Mmm-hmmmmmm...."

I can't decide whether she actually heard and understood the question or not.  I also can't decide if it's funnier thinking that she did or that she didn't.