My pitiful Browns…

Thanks to Eddie Bevens for finding this. Even as a Browns fan I love it.

Sorry, PC, you get what you pay for

Check out this Fast Company article on Microsoft having to retract outdated Mac pricing info from their Bargain Hunter ads. Especially amusing is the mock video spot at the bottom of the page. Funny stuff.

Looking for an excuse to not be emergent?

If you want to put together some sort of reasoning for why you are not an emergent Christian, let me send you to a funny list (by way of Julie’s blog) that should help you in your excuse-making.

Some of my favorite reasons on Jonathan Brink’s list:

44. It’s just not allowed in the Vanderhoeven family.

42. Mark Driscoll told me I couldn’t.

38. I didn’t learn about Emergent in seminary, so I’m not going to start now.

35. I’ve heard from a famous prison ministry guy that they don’t believe the Bible.

22. Brian McLaren’s books are not theologically correct. I’m not sure why, I just know they are.

17. If it doesn’t have the letters SBC in it, I’m not interested.

You should read the list. It’s pretty stellar.

Sirens, cops, floor toms, and snares

Found this in the RELEVANT News Slices:

If I ever get arrested, I’m absolutely positive that I want it to be for this.

And I play one on TV

Talk about taking your role seriously. An actor who is part of a recent blockbuster movie released this week in Britain on the Naples Mafia known as Camorra was arrested over the weekend for actually being part of Camorra.

The irony! 

My guess is that he really nailed the role. Can you imagine, during the making of the film, the director giving this guy a whole bunch of critique on his role. He just rolls his eyes and plays along. Awesome.

“What in the name of me is going on here?”

The Jesus videos are kind of old news, but every now and then I meet someone who hasn’t seen them, which makes it worth posting them here. (Plus they have decent replay value if you watched them awhile back.) Anyway, a church in North Carolina (I believe) did all of the voice-overs to make some good points about popular misconceptions of Christ.

Smirk

This is only funny if you’re stuck in a biblical studies/seminary/theological world, but the Fake Carson blog is a page that impostors the professor and theologian who once made an attempt at “conversing” with the emergent church. 

I guess the blog shut down about a year ago after the administration at TEDS took themselves very seriously and worked to clamp the mouths (fingers, really) of the blog’s writers (they probably called it being “conversant” with the blog).

Anyway, fake Carson is good for a laugh.

Linked to laughter.

If you haven’t been yet, go check out the website Stuff White People Like. It’s an amusing inspection of the white man’s world in all its ridiculousness. It’s in a blog format, where entries come as numeric additions to the all-time list of “stuff white people like.”

 

My favorite posts include:

#94 Free Healthcare

#88 Having Gay Friends

#87 Outdoor Performance Clothes

#78 Multilingual Children

#72 Study Abroad

#62 Knowing What’s Best for Poor People

#51 Living by the Water

#47 Arts Degrees

#22 Having Two Last Names

#9 Making You Feel Bad About Not Going Outside

 

There’s even a Stuff White People Like book coming out July 1. You can grab it at Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Powell’s.

 

If you’ve already been to this site a million times, sorry for my obviousness in posting about this. But I keep meeting people who I think would love the site and have never heard of it. 

 

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

 

Hanging my dream from the rafters.

As of today, I officially rescind my desire to be an NBA star. The change in status is effective immediately. I’ve contacted most national media outlets, but I also wanted to break the news to you, my fans, in this intimate blog setting.

 

The dream which once glowed in my eight-year-old mind is calling it a career after 15 long years, millions of driveway free-throws attempted, hundreds of hours spent playing basketball video games, numerous lengthy conversations spent bragging about my mad skills as a three-point deadeye, and zero NBA titles.

 

Surviving several ups and downs over fifteen years, the dream saw its peak in 1998. In the eighth grade, my ridiculous skills helped carry the Medina First Baptist Knights to the playoffs with a record somewhere in the range of 12-4. More importantly than team details, I posted stellar individual stats. Third on the Knights in scoring, first in steals, somewhere near the top in assists (Did you know that I would bring the ball up court as a center?! I was basically a white KG.), and the conference leader in three-point field goals (lights out from downtown), I was the total package, save for rebounding (wasn’t much for roughing it up in the lane, believe it or not).

 

In 1998 I was a total match-up problem for opposing defenses. Because I played center, opposing coaches would put their center on me as a defensive assignment. And sure, I’d play soft defense on their big man (circa white centers everywhere in the 90s), but when I was on offense I would play so far on the outside that the other center didn’t know what to do. I’d pop the three – if I made it, we got three; if I missed it, their center was nowhere near the rebound.

 

The pinnacle of 1998 basketball came during halftime of a road game in North Ridgeville, Ohio. Being the immeasurable talent that I was, I decided to skip my coach’s halftime chat to work on my shot – my one-handed shot. I set up in the right corner and began to shoot one-handed from three-point range.

 

Made the first. And the second. The third. After about five I had the attention of everyone in the gym. Some of them must have been watching from the get-go, because they had their count correct. As I made the seventh, they cheered, “SEVEN!”

 

This went on for each make. “EIGHT!” “NINE!” As I finally missed my attempt for a fourteenth consecutive one-handed three pointer, my rimmed out shot was met with groans and then a thankful ovation. I was the entertainment for the road crowd that day (which is good, because it was a Christian school, so even if there were cheerleaders, they were either too ugly or dressed too much like the cast of Little House on the Prairie to make a difference).

 

And really, what would Coach Thompson have said at halftime that was more important than refining the one-handed trey? It’s a part of every future-NBA-star’s skill set.

 

1998 was a good year.

 

So why hang up the dream? Why not call back the Ghost of ‘98 to see if we can’t do it all over again – even if Medina First Baptist probably does not accept college graduates onto their junior high squads. Well, for starters, I can no longer play the center position. I was tall for an eighth-grade boy, but I steadied out at 6′1″ while some of my peers surpassed me with their later growth spurts. The image of being a weak Euro-style big man eluded me some time ago. 

 

In addition, I’ve gotten a bit fatter. And being a fatso isn’t super helpful in basketball, unless you’re taking your ghetto booty beneath the basket to rump it up as you toss and tumble for rebounds and tip-ins (see Boston’s Glen Davis, or, for you old folks, think back to Sir Charles Barkley). If you’d rather look pretty and shoot from outside than play manly, physical basketball, nobody wants you to be fat. So that’s a strike against me.

 

And really, who wants to be an NBA star if you’re going to have to play rough, if it requires hard work?

 

Even when my NBA aspirations were clouded by competing dreams of being a writer, a musician, or helping people as a pastor, the NBA dream did not roll over and die. Sure, I basically stopped playing the sport, but that didn’t keep me from talking about my future NBA success. Even at 18 or 20 years of age, there was still time (not really, but) for me to right the ship and return to Option A, canning the long shot in the eyes of Ray Allen and Carmelo Anthony, respectively. But at 23, I have to admit that the chances of making the roster of a pro team have dwindled. If nothing else, I’ve become less appealing and marketable for a shoe deal. 

 

If I’m looking for an excuse for not realizing my long-held dream (and I am), I could point toward my success as a writer and pastor, and how those “side projects” diverted my focus away from my true calling. Beyond that, I point to the pressures of growing up as a contemporary of LeBron James, who was lording over the high school basketball world just 15 miles away from my Ohio home. The Ohio high school basketball scene wasn’t really big enough for both LeBron and I, so it was only right that I would bow out and let James achieve pay-per-view hype as a high school phenom. I needed to be the bigger man.

 

So where will I go from here? I’ll continue to play the game at local parks, in the driveways of people fifteen years my junior, and even city recreation centers. I’ll be the guy standing lazily in the corner, knocking down one three-pointer after another.