Summer of Sequels

With the start of the Memorial Day weekend comes the official start of Summertime, and subsequently, the start of the Summer movie season. One thing I keep hearing people talking about is the fact that there are very few movies with original ideas. Besides the now usual and steady stream of replica slasher films and high school rich-girl-and-inner-city-boy-dance-together-and-become-better-people movies, there is a wide margin of sequels this year.

Particularly, sequels of sequels. That is, thirds. Just looking at the list of movies I can think of that are coming out this Summer, we have the third Spiderman movie, the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Shrek the third, the third Bourne movie, Ocean's 13, and the third Rush Hour.

These are just the movies that are part threes. There are more.

We've got another Die Hard coming out, another Harry Potter, another Fantastic Four, and another National Treasure. We've got Evan Almighty, 28 Weeks Later, and Daddy Day Camp, which is sure to be an atrocity, considering that nobody from the original cast of Daddy Day Care is returning for the second movie.

While a lot of these movies are highly anticipated (in fact, I'm fairly excited about most of them), This list of repeats begs the question: Does Hollywood have any more original ideas left? It doesn't look like they do.

There is a little bit of hope, however. Typically, movie franchises end after the third installment, meaning that the threes that are coming out this year will probably spell the end to sequels of their respective bases. So perhaps there will be more original movies next year. You know, in between the next Batman movie, the next Indiana Jones, the next Narnia movie and the next Harry Potter. There are a lot of other sequels slated for 2008 release, but some of them make me sick to my stomach considering that I never imagined that anybody would watch the first movie, let alone a second or third.

Incidentally, yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the original theatrical release of Star Wars. Happy Birthday, George Lucas creation that spawned five sequels (so far)!

What Every Christian Should Know #8

Here is a link to number eight of Keith Giles's ten part monthly blog series entitled "TOP 10 THINGS EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD KNOW (But Probably Doesn't)".

Here is just a sample:

Number 8- "Obedience Is Not An Option"

OBEDIENCE TO JESUS IS NOT OPTIONAL
"If you love me, you will obey what I command."- Jesus (John 14:15)

Somehow we have allowed the idea that someone can be a follower of Jesus without actually obeying Jesus' teaching or becoming a disciple. What we have in modern American Christianity is a brand of religion that says to its founder, "I'd like a little of your blood to cover my sins, but I don't care to follow you or take your teachings seriously. If you would please excuse me, I’ll get on with my life. See you in heaven." Dallas Willard calls those kinds of people “Vampire Christians” because all they want is some of Jesus’ blood, but none of His leadership.

"You are my friends if you do what I command"- Jesus (John 15:14)

HOW DID WE GET HERE?
"Easy Grace" is the short answer. The long answer is that, in an effort to streamline evangelism and create a sound-byte version of the Gospel we've reduced the message to "Pray this prayer if you don't want to go to hell when you die". This makes the ninety-second evangelist happy, but the full message of the Gospel is lost in the process.

Gone is the idea that Jesus calls people to follow Him. A decision to become a Christian is a decision to give up your personal rights to call the shots in your life. It means submitting to God, to the teachings of Jesus and the authority of the Word of God as the one and only source of how to live.

"Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me." -Jesus (John 14:21)

Remnants of this more complete Gospel are still part of our Christian-ese language. People still say things like; "I gave my life to Christ" or "When I surrendered my life to Jesus" as part of their church talk, but many don't literally mean that they've done this, or that they are still doing this today.

The decision to obey Jesus, to submit to Him is a daily decision. We must bend the knee and whisper the prayer of surrender to Christ each day. It is not a one-time thing. This is why Jesus urges His disciples to ask for daily bread when they pray and to make their obedience to Him an act of daily taking up our cross to die to ourselves. This is also why God's mercies are new every morning. We have short memories and God knows we need to surrender to him afresh with every breath.

Some of us still sing "I Surrender All" and we still have a "Jesus is Lord" bumper sticker on our car, but many in the modern American Church have forgotten the meaning of those words. Jesus is not really the Lord because we're not actually surrendering all to Him.

This Week's Post

It occurred to me that I haven't made a blog post in over a week and that I should probably write something to keep the blog updated.

So there you go. This week's blog post.

Summer

Summer is here, people. I've started my job at MDOT again and now spend much of the work day walking down highways and looking for culverts. Fun times. It really feels good to be working again. It feels good to know that there's a paycheck around the corner too, but there's something about having a job that gives a guy a sense of purpose.

I've started my Summer I class too. I'm taking Dynamics, which apparently is a very difficult class during a normal semester. Since it's a Summer class, the course will be going at a very fast pace. We cover one week's material in one two to three hour class period. I have class twice a week, and three sets of homework are due at the beginning of each class. This means that I have to have twelve problems that are extremely heavy in differential equations done before I start work at 7:30 am on those days. It's like I'm taking a very involved, calculus-based physics class on speed.

But this weekend, I intend on relaxing between Dynamics homework. I'm heading home for Mother's Day and will get to see some of my friends back there again. I think we might even be playing beach volleyball tomorrow. It's going to be great.

Classical Music Overload

I went on a classical music overload the other day. From the time I woke up, I was looking up songs and listening to music that I don't normally listen to. It's not that I don't like classical music, it's just that I don't really spend a lot of time getting into it. But everything changed on Thursday morning simply because I woke up to Tom and Jerry.

When I woke up, I turned on my television to find a cartoon glazing my screen. It was an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. This is the kind of cartoon that they just don't make anymore. I'd be surprised if kids today knew that these cartoons existed. But we grew up on these, folks. Anyway, the episode I was watching was called "The Cat Concerto". In this episode, Tom is playing a piano piece while Jerry tries to mess it up. What ensues is a duel between the two that ends up completing the song, not destroying it.

But after that episode was over I could only think one thing.

What was that song?

As I said before, my generation and the ones before were raised on these kinds of cartoons, and so, as in the case of this episode and others like it, we were exposed to a great deal of classical music. We are exposed to it so much that we recognize this music while not knowing exactly what the music is. Television commercials do the same thing. They use classical pieces in their ads, but we don't know what they are. We just recognize them and end up humming them to ourselves.

But after watching that episode of Tom and Jerry, I decided to do what any desperate man would do in that situation.

I Googled it.

I found this site, which helped me satisfy my search for the title of that song, Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 by Franz Liszt. I'm quite sure that anybody in America would recognized this tune almost immediately. It was also featured in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" among other places. You can download Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 by right clicking this link and saving it.

And so, with a little more Googling, I was able to find another site which tells you the Top 10 Classical Works You Know, but You Don't Know. It's definitely worth checking out.

If anyone out there has a song stuck in their head from a cartoon or commercial and wants to know what it is, ask me and I might look it up for you.

Or, you know, you could just Google it.

The Unquisition

Here's a clip from the Colbert Report that I found rather interesting.

Check it out.