charlieDEAN’S Blog

And tonights quote, to get the ball rolling:

“could, maybe, but shorn’t….

….what part of shorn’t don’t you understand?”

(btw…I still predict that Jan is pregnant and that it’s not over)

hey everyone!

we’re back with quotes from the office.  after a hiatus, it had to be from Michael:

“snip…snap…snip…snap…snip…snap.  you have no idea the physical toll that three vasectomies have on a person!”

knowing that i’ve been a long-time fan, a friend recently gifted me, through iTunes, Counting Crows’ new CD, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings.

i’ve listened to it 3 or 4 times now, all the way through. it’s a strong album. it’s a great mix of what you’d expect from the counting crows — varying tempos, moods and styles. so far i haven’t found any soulful crooning like “sullivan street,” or “rainin’ in Baltimore, but i that’s okay.

good album.

if you’re a counting crows fan, i think you’ll like it.

Every year it happens…

The weather starts warming up, the sun roof gets opened,  and from somewhere deep inside of me this latent longing for hard rock emerges.  So here’s where the fun is…

At the risk of great personal embarrassment and loss of respect for the small degree of “coolness” that I may posses in ever-decreasing measure, I’ll open the floor to two kinds of comments:

1.  I will reveal my favorite guitar/rock song of all time after letting you guess for a while (I will provide clues in the comments as we move forward.)  At this juncture I will say that this song may not be my favorite song per se, but if I could  just turn off the vocals and listen to the band I would be a happy guy!

2.  Your favorite spring-time-windows-down rock song?

I liked this movie so much that even though I saw it in the theater only a couple months ago, I put in in my Blockbuster Que, and watched it again last weekend!

Here are three things that captured my attention (and two of the three relate to how we do church, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions):

• i love this style of movie-making where things appear more normal. cars are old and rusty. actors are blemish-free. it rains a lot. basically, it’s just more real. sometimes i do watch movies to “willingly suspend disbelief,” but most of the time, i enjoy seeing the beauty in everyday stuff.
• i was watching an interview with the director and he was talking about the camaraderie among the cast and crew and all the things they did to really build a sense of “family” on the set and he said something to this effect, “we wanted to be as proud of how we made the movie as we were of the movie itself.”
• again, the director was talking about the type of humor employed in the movie and suggested that stupid humor (see almost everything done by Will Ferrell) is easy and cheap. but great humor comes in the midst of sadness. i think this is true. (and he didn’t diss Will Ferrell…that was me. and i’m not saying that i don’t enjoy some cheap humor once in a while either…”we’re the knights who say NEE!”)

I was at the library not too long ago, and spontaneously picked up Michael Moore’s documentary SiCKO.  Here’s my quick review:

Unfortunately, Michael Moore has a way of taking a serious issue that really needs serious discussion, debate and insight and handles it with such a sneer and with side-jabs that are completely ad-hominem,  to the degree that his style completely overshadows his substance.  Furthemore, his solution to the problem is so extreme as to make it completely irrelevant to the conversation.  Too bad.

[ps.  the extreme right does the same thing, and it's too bad]

last weekend i finally got to watch the movie Into the Wild. i’m a fan of Jon Krakauer, and so i was eagerly anticipating this movie-version, but was unable to get to the theater and see it when it came out in November. Here are a couple movie thoughts, and then some personal reflections:

• i’ve already said that the soundtrack is amazing. in the context of the movie it’s even more so.
• beautifully shot film. i wish i could have seen it on the big screen.
• as is the norm, the movie-makers added some content, which is too bad, considering this is all about a real person and real events. the thing is, i didn’t see that the added parts were necessary.

here’s the thing. this was a great film. but my guess is that there will be some people who absolutely love it and others who hate it — and it probably has more to do with their own personality than the actual film.

some people look at the story of Chris McCandless and say, “he was crazy” and they just don’t get why he did what he did. others, including Krakauer in the book, look at McCandless and say, “i get it. i have the same wanderlust, the same craving for adventure.”

i was telling this to Jennifer — that were i not bound by various responsibilities — i could see myself strapping on a backpack and heading into the wild for some time — and she told me how when she was in the bookstore recently she saw a promotional display that said ADVENTURE and she was looking at the books realizing that i either owned or had read many of the books.

If you like picking brackets in March…

and you like lost…

check out the LOST brackets!

Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip suggests that lyrics that actually make sense are optional for a hit song.  So, he asked readers to submit nonsense lyrics…readers obliged and some German band, RIVO DREI put the lyrics to music…

It’s an awesome song!  (link)  It really is complete nonsense.

My favorite lines comes from the chorus…

“woah-oh she amazed me…with her love she ‘tased’ me”   and “how she ‘outer-spaced’ me”

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