Pop Culture Quote Monday
I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.
Who said it and what’s it from?
… I should really make these harder.
Dang it! Say it with me everyone “_____ ______ _____ _____.”
Blue Like Jazz
I read this book a long time ago and I’ve noticed the world seems to be catching on. Lots of people I know are talking about it… and that’s an interesting thing to me.
What do I love about this book? It’s honesty. It’s relatability. (Okay.. that’s not a word. But you know what I mean.) Miller wasn’t trying to break any new ground with this book, but what he did do is make it okay to talk about Christianity again, and helped make it easy to talk about Jesus with people who’ve been burned by Christians. That’s a big deal in our culture today.
There are some questionable things (theology-wise) in this book, and every book I’ve ever read has that. It’s a very quick read, but it’s a book you want to absorb. This is not a airplane-ride book. This is a “read it before you go to bed and pick it up the next day over your lunch hour” kind of book. You want to read more, but you want to savor it at the same time. It’s like a good Riesling, right Steph T?
What I liked the most about this book was that it made me realize I’m not alone in my craziness, or my questioning.
And that’s just alright with me.
There is something quite beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. There is something quite beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what he is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always know he was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined him looking down on this earth, half-angry because his beloved mankind cheated on him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for for her.
Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due
Those of you who know me know how much I hate Wal-Mart. The hate began as nothing more than a disgust for a dirty store that always had too many people in it, until the abhorrent foreign labor practices and destruction of small-town America began. So I haven’t shopped there for years.
That said, I must give credit where it is due. And what I’m about to tell you in no way erases what they’ve done.
One of the guitarists I lead worship with recently fell from some scaffolding at his job. It caused major damage to his scalp, a crushed ankle and a broken leg. His injuries are significant and required more than one surgery. He is in very rough shape. His wife is a shift supervisor at the Wal-Mart in my town. Due to his accident, Wal-Mart gave her a year off to take care of him. With pay.
While I know that a year’s salary for someone in her position is a drop in the bucket for a corporation like Wal-Mart, that made me happy.
I will still never shop there. But… I must give credit where credit is due.
Pop Culture Quote Monday
The guys at work have this thing with me – they are always quoting something, usually movies, to get me to guess where the quote is from. Today the quote was from The Jerk, which I didn’t know and it killed me.
And all day I had Elton John’s Tiny Dancer in my head. All day. (I really love that song.) Then I sang it the wrong way…
Hold me close young Tony Danza
Thus was born a new idea: Pop Culture Quote Monday.
So, readers, what are the wrong lyrics from and who said it?
Competitive Reality Show Heaven
Regular readers may remember what a fan I am of Iron Chef America. I love the over-the-top attitude the show relishes in. I laugh out loud, am fascinated and weirded-out every time I watch it. Never having seen the original Iron Chef I don’t know if the American version stands up, but that doesn’t matter to me – for now I am in American reality show heaven.
As a lover of competitive reality shows like Project Runway, Top Chef and The Amazing Race (which I haven’t seen in two years since my CBS strike. *tiny sniffle*) I was giddy with anticipation last week with the premiere of what? You guessed it. The Next Iron Chef.
Last week they sent home Traci Des Jardin, not only one of the few women ever on ICA but actually a winner against Mario Batali, who has am impressive 15-4 record. I felt she was sent home too soon. This week, there was fun with chemicals and the awesome Wylie Dufresne. Giddy again.
So far my favorites are Aaron Sanchez and John Besh, probably because I’ve seen both their original battles on ICA and both impressed the pants out of me. Besh won against Batali, while Sanchez tied with Morimoto, one of the original Iron Chefs in Japan.
I adore Top Chef, but this show puts it to shame. These chefs are obviously some of the best in America and to watch them go head-to-head amidst the strange challenges (make a desert with squid? Really?) is a pleasure.
The addition of Alton Brown does hurt, either.
Stephanie Nelson 