Jesusgreek

When I heard The Eagles "Long Road Out of Eden Tour" was coming to Greensboro I cleared my calendar and made I was able to get tickets the second they went on sale. The tickets were a Christmas present for Beth but truth be known I was just as excited as she was to see them. We noticed two things when we arrived at the concert; first was the ridiculous $15 parking fee, and secondly the temperature inside the coliseum. It may have been freezing outside but it was close to 80º inside. Someone must have noticed the sweating crowd and turned it down but it took several hours for the temperature to become bearable. As far as the parking fee, it was an obvious case of the city taking advantage (extortion) of a sold out crowd that had already paid outrageous prices for the tickets. The Eagles came out nicely dressed in black suits, white shirts, and black ties playing acoustic guitars. The current featured Eagles members are Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit an...

The was a good year of book reading. Over half (11 out of 20) of the books I read in 2008 I'd classify as 4 stars. I tried to be a lot more deliberate in my reading choices this year read and not just read whatever book caught my eye or was passed on to me. In 2009 I've decided not to read a single book until I've read through the Bible again. I find myself only reading the Bible as a source of sermon, bible study, or counseling prep and not just for the shear enjoyment of the greatest book ever written . I'm trying a fresh approach to my walk through the Bible this time around as I'll be reading "The Book of God" by Walter Wangerin. Walter has taken the Bible, arranged it in chronological order, and wrote it in novel form. Should be good stuff!! Anyway, here are my favorite books of 2008: 1) "The Shack" by William P. Young - 4 Stars 2) "Confessions of a Pastor" by Craig Groeschel - 4 Stars 3) "Quiet Strength" by Tony Dungy - ...

Here are my top television shows of 2008: 1) Dexter 2) Lost 3) Dead Like Me 4) The Office 5) My Name Is Earl 6) Scrubs 7) Ultimate Fighter

1) Gears of War 2 (360) 2) Lego Star Wars: the Complete Saga (Wii) 3) Rock Band 2 (360) 4) Wii Fit (Wii) 5) Dance Dance Revolution X (PS2) 6) Burnout Paradise (360)

1) Dark Knight 2) The Bucket List 3) Dan in Real Life 4) Juno 5) Bolt 6) Kung-Fu Panda 7) Bedtime Stories 8) Hancock 9) The Incredible Hulk 10) Baby Mama 11) Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Most Disappointing Movies 1) The Happening 2) 7 Pounds 3) Prince Caspian 4) Semi-Pro 5) Step Brothers

The Streak Jerry: Oh, I'm gonna puke. Bania: Puke? That's a funny word. Can I use that? Some people go through life surprised when they don't puke every time they get sick. I'm not one of those people. I hadn't thrown-up in over 25 years...until Tuesday night. There has been this a nasty stomach bug going around that leaves you head over toilet for several hours. Then as quickly as it arrives it's gone. Once Beth woke up with it Tuesday morning I knew it was just a matter of time before my streak was over. 25 years down the drain. JERRY: Uh, wa? ELAINE: What's the matter with you? JERRY: Uh, I don't feel so good. ELAINE: What's wrong? JERRY: My stomach, I , I think it was that cookie. ELAINE: The black and white? JERRY: Yeah. ELAINE: Not getting along? JERRY: I think I got David Duke and Fahrikan down there. ELAINE: Well if we can't look to the cookie where can we look? JERRY: I feel like I'm going to throw up. ELAINE: Hey, what...

Get use to the next couple of weeks being full of "My Top" or "My Favorite" list. I guess it's the end of the year so that's just the kind of mood I'm in. Beth and I finally got around to watching "Semi-Pro" last night staring Will Ferrell. Although it wasn't one of his best, it is worth a rental (Thanks Netflix) After the movie it got me pondering where were my favorite films "featuring" (cameos don't count) Will Ferrell. Well here they are... 1) Stranger Than Fiction 2) Blades of Glory 3) Elf 4) Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 5) Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby 6) Semi-Pro 7) Kicking and Screaming

1) Christmas with the Kranks 2) Elf 3) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 4) Home Alone 2 5) The Santa Clause 6) Home Alone 7) Scrooged 8) A Christmas Story 9) The Santa Clause 2 10) Gremlins 11) Die Hard 12) Jingle All the Way There's my list. I know everyone has a favorite and most people will disagree with mine but it's what I like. Am I saying my top 12 are the best? Nope. Just my favorites. I know a lot of people love the classics like "It's a wonderful life", and "Miracle on 34th street" but I see nothing appealing in them. I'm not saying they are bad movie, just not my taste. And while I also enjoy a good Christmas cartoon (Charlie Brown, The Grinch, Frosty, and Rudolph) I see those as more TV specials then full blown Christmas movies.

There is nothing I love to watch more then a good documentary. Not one that covers a topic that's been seen a hundred times before but one such as "Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana" or the latest I just watched, "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters". It covers one man's attempt to beat the world record high score for Donkey Kong. Before you roll your eyes and stop reading, just hear me out. Billy Mitchel is the world Donkey Kong champion with a score of about 850,000. He set that record back in 1982. No one has come close to it since. In fact the 2nd place is about 500,000 points. He is the Michael Jordan of the competitive video game world, only Mitchell is portrayed as an evil and heartless villain. He once held 5 different video game world records at once. Steve Wiebe has a wife and children. He just got laid off from his job and he fails at almost everything he does. Since he doesn't have a job, he finds something to do to pass the time. He see...

A few weeks ago a buddy of mine told me about a book he had recently read and loved. It was called "Dinner with a perfect stranger". The premise: A man who is not a follower of Christ receives an invitation in the mail to have dinner with Jesus. Did I mention this takes place in modern day? As he was describing the book all I could think was, "This is exactly why I don't read Christian fiction. This sounds ridiculous." When he finished telling me how much it had enjoyed it I politely nodded and gave the ol', "Hmmm. I'll have to check that out sometime." Knowing good and well I would never pick the thing up. Fast forward to last week. My pastor, Mike, and I were at a Wake Forest basketball game when he started telling me about this great book he had ran across for a $1 at a used book sale. He went on about how much he loved it. The name? "Dinner with a perfect stranger." I've come to realize in life that when God throws up a sugges...

I have been a HUGE Tom Petty fan ever since I got my hands on a "Full Moon Fever" "tape" back in '89. So when I had the chance to get some tickets back in January for his Charlotte show I didn't think twice about it. It has been at least 6 years since I last attended a 'secular" concert. (James Taylor '02) Not that I have anything against secular music or concerts, there just haven't been any I was willing to shell out $50+ a ticket for. Until now. When we arrived at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Charlotte the place looked more like the parking lot to a Panthers game with all the tailgating that was going on. A nice surprise was they didn't charge for parking. I guess they figured that after sticking you with $16 in service charges per tickets it was the least they could do. After parking and making our way through the sea of pre-concert partiers, we found our seats. We sat in the last section of seat in front of the lawn center stage...

I had the chance this past week during some down time at camp to get away and catch a couple of my "must see" movies from my summer movie list. I saw the "Incredible Hulk" and "Hancock". Both were good flicks with Hancock taking the lead at the top of my favorite summer movie list...so far. So to review, here are the the films I've seen so far along with the rest of the top 10 I'd like to see. Seen Hancock - 3 Stars (Great story, action, and humor. Could have been a bit more cleaner with the language, not a movie for kids) The Incredible Hulk - 2 1/2 Stars (Better then the first Hulk movie but still not up to Spiderman, X-men, or Batman level) Prince Caspian - 2 1/2 Stars (Great action & story, poor dialogue) The Happening - 1/2 Stars (Nothing redeeming about this movie) Want to See The Dark Knight (After M. Night, the Nolan brothers are my favorite writers/directors) Indiana Jones (Can my childhood hero live up to my childhood memories) Step B...

"This movie's hurt'n" - Ryan McDaniel "There is not one redeeming quality from that movie" - Beth Gianopulos "There has to be a good reason why this movie was so bad. Maybe is was M. Knight's way of giving Hollywood the middle finger." - Kipp Garrett Those were just a few of the quotes from my wife and friends as we stood around outside the theater trying to comprehend what we just saw. I'm as big of a M. Knight Shyamalan fan as you'll find anywhere. I not only have loved all is previous movies (including The Village and Lady in the water) but I own them. Ever since I read the premise last summer of his newest film 'The Happening", about earth finally having enough of mankind destroying it so it begins to purge the world of humans by releasing a poisonous gas into the air, I thought this movie would be a work or art. Boy was I wrong. What I got was 89 minutes of bad story, bad acting, bad dialogue, and unlikeable characters. Th...

My kids LOVE the book "Where the wild things are". So you imagine my excitement when I heard Tom hanks was making the story of Max and his wild friends into a major motion picture. The film was set to be released this October but word has just come out that it has been pushed back until Fall 2009 because the studio thought the first editing of the film might be to scary for young viewers. At least we have these cool pics to tease us until then.

I've watched several movies over the past couple of months both on DVD and in theaters. Here is a long overdue review of some of the more memorable ones. Prince Caspian Maybe it was the over hype of everyone saying this film was better then "The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe", but I left feeling a bit disappointed. It was nowhere near as good as the first Narnia film. My main problem with "Caspian" was it seemed to be one of those movies that tried to hard to please every movie goer instead of focusing on one thing and doing it well. The fight scenes were much more intense in this film compared to "Lion" which was fine by me, but then I suspect the directors thought they might be too intense for younger viewers so they would stop the action to allow a silly, childish comment by one of the actors to lighten the mood. Either be a kids film or an action / adventure film. Don't try to do both. LOTRs pulled it off and Narnia could have too. 2 1/2 Stars ...

For the past couple of weeks, I have been giving you my "Top (insert number)" list for a variety of things. From books, to movies, to trips, I will list my personal favorites from 2007. I beat my "most books read in one year" record by one book. This year I made it up to 25 books. Again I know for some avid readers this is no big deal but for non readers like myself it's the equivalent to climbing Everest. Now for my top 10 books of 2007: 1) "American Shaolin" by Matthew Polly 2) "The Bedford Boys" by Alex Kershaw 3) "Shadow Divers" by Robert Kurson 4) "The Unexpected Journey: Conversations with People Who Turned from Other Beliefs to Jesus" By Thom Rainer 5) "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer 6) "Sex God" by Rob Bell 7) "Tales From The Wake Forest Hardwood" by Dan Collins 8) "Voices of Valor" by Douglas Brinkley & Ronald Drez 9) "Shame Off You" by Alan Wright...

For the next couple of weeks, I will be giving you my "Top (insert number)" list for a variety of things. From books, to movies, to trips, to music, I will list my personal favorites from 2007. The following movies came out this past year and I can say for all of them I regret I will no longer have the 2 hours of my life back I wasted watching them. To me all these films lacked either a good story line, good dialogue, good acting, or a combination of all three. Here are my top 5 worst films from 2007: 1) Happy Feet (actually released in '06 but saw in theater in '07) 2) 1408 3) Transformers 4) Vacancy 5) Bridge to Terabithia

For the next couple of weeks, I will be giving you my "Top (insert number)" list for a variety of things. From books, to movies, to trips, to music, I will list my personal favorites from 2007. The following DVD movies were seen this past year for the first time. Some are fairly new and some are classic that I never got around to watching. Some are blockbuster hots while others are lesser known borderline indie films. Here are my top 17 DVD flicks from 2007: 1) Little Miss Sunshine 2) 28 days Later 3) Lucky Number Slevin 4) Usual Suspects 5) L.A. Confidential 6) Life is beautiful 7) Stranger Than Fiction 8) American Beauty 9) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 10) Sideways 11) Punch-Drunk Love 12) Everything's Illuminated 13) Waiting for Guffman 14) Adaptation 15) Best in Show 16) The Pursuit of Happyness 17) In America

For the next couple of weeks, I will be giving you my "Top (insert number)" list for a variety of things. From books, to movies, to trips, to music, I will list my personal favorites from 2007. The following movies were seen in theaters or released in 2007 and received at least 3 stars from me. Here are my top 11 movies of 2007: 1) I am legend 2) Into the Wild 3) Pan's Labyrinth 4) The Departed 5) Blades of Glory 6) Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix 7) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End 8) Spiderman 3 9) Knocked Up 10) Number 23 11) 28 Weeks Later

I went in to "I am legend" with absolutely no idea what to expect or what the movie was about other than Will Smith being the last man on earth after some kind of world wide catastrophe. What I got was one of the best movies I've seen this year. "I am legend" is half "Castaway" and half "28 days later". It takes the best elements from both films and creates and phenomenal movie that you don't want to end. In fact my only complaint with the movie is that it was too short (1hr 40 min). The plot is this: Robert Neville, a brilliant scientist, isn't quite brilliant enough to stop a man-made virus from escaping and killing everyone in sight. Somehow, though, Robert is immune. But what good is surviving if you're the last person on the planet? After three years of searching for others, Robert soon discovers that he is in fact not alone; mutant victims of the virus are watching his every move. As Robert realizes that his time may be up, ...