The Living Room

This week: Songs from movies.

1. St. Francis Choir, “Joyful, Joyful” (Sister Act 2)
2. Various artists, “Hakuna Matata” (The Lion King)
3. Dana Fuchs, Joe Anderson, and T.V. Carpio, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” (Across the Universe)
4. Rufus Wainwright, “Across the Universe (remix)” (Poses, used in I Am Sam)
5. I Nine, “Same In Any Language” (Elizabethtown)
6. The Shins, “Caring is Creepy” (Garden State)
7. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, “If You Want Me” (Once)
8. Jack Black, “Let’s Get It On” (High Fidelity)
9. Jacek Roman, Ewan McGregor, and Jose Feliciano, “El Tango de Roxanne” (Moulin Rouge)
10. Patty Loveless, “Two Coats” (The Apostle)
11. Whitney Houston and the Georgia Mass Choir, “Hold On, Help is on the Way” (The Preacher’s Wife)
12. Brian Stokes Mitchell, “Through Heaven’s Eyes” (The Prince of Egypt)
13. Dashboard Confessional, “Vindicated” (Spider-man 2)
14. U2, “All I Want is You” (Rattle and Hum, also shows up in Reality Bites)

This week: Thirteen things you want to learn how to do.

1. Use a sewing machine.
2. Be fluent in Spanish.
3. Salsa dance.
4. Make puff pastry from scratch.
5. Crochet.
6. Write (better) HTML and XML and CSS and all that nonsense.
7. Write calligraphy.
8. Write databases.
9. Mix sound (I sort of know how to do this, but I want to be better at it).
10. Get better at using Excel.
11. Work statistics.
12. Knit intarsia and Fair Isle (the fancy colorwork kind of stuff–like this).
13. Do camera work for movies.

This week’s theme: Think of a person you know. Make a mix tape especially for them. Don’t tell us who it is.

1. U2, “Levitate”
2. Dean Gray, “Boulevard of Broken Songs”
3. The Beatles, “Lady Madonna”
4. Kevin Max, “Irish Hymn”
5. REM, “Try Not to Breathe”
6. Johnny Cash, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”
7. The Duhks, “Sleepin’ Is All I Wanna Do (stars on a sunny day)”
8. Counting Crows, “Friend of the Devil”
9. Bob Dylan, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
10. Josh Ritter, “Come and Find Me”
11. Vigilantes of Love, “River of Love”
12. Raul Esparza, “Marry Me A Little”
13. Wilco, “Misunderstood”
14. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”
15. Five Iron Frenzy, “Superpowers”
16. Adele, “Right As Rain”
17. Ethan Durelle, “From the Heart of Blythe County”

Here’s to my dad: Fixer of electronic things, griller of steaks, lender of money. Married my mom when he was 21. Been with the same company almost 40 years, including that break he took to teach at my high school, where every guy in his classes developed a serious man-crush on him (ha!). Unembarrassed about his love for all things Disney (and he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptist, everyone). Predicted a complete switch to wireless telephone systems in the early ’80s. Hates writing, and is boggled that one of his children got an English major, but oh well. Lifelong Aggie, I’m sorry to say. Has a decent baritone.

You know, the older I get, the more I realize that my dad is a good man. Not a perfect man, mind you, but a good man. Faithful to his wife, protector and provider for his children, hard and consistent worker, loyal member of his church and of the Church. So I raise my glass (full of Diet Coke, of course) to you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.

Woo, been a while. Sorry, y’all. This week: Because I need this, 13 good things in your life right now.

1. I have good friends and good parents.
2. There’s a Whataburger around the corner, and they make very good shakes.
3. My mom’s out of the hospital, yay!
4. I get paid in the morning, yay!
5. There is both Dr Pepper and beer in my fridge.
6. I have not one, but two jobs.
7. Air conditioning! Seriously, y’all, if you live in Texas and have never thanked God for air conditioning, shame on you.
8. I heart my church.
9. My old churches podcast, so I get to keep up with them, too.
10. My friends Ashley and Sam are getting married next week!
11. I have access to not one, but THREE different library systems. This is awesome.
12. Actually, I think I’m losing weight, and I haven’t been doing anything intentional to do so. Weird, eh?
13. I am Christ’s and He is mine. Amazing.

*I know a lot of people want to see a second Protestant Reformation happen in our time–the question is, who will be our Luther and Calvin and Zwingli (or who are those guys, if they’re around now), or who are and who have been our Hus and Wycliffe? Who’s going to nail the theses to the door? Or is it going to be a plethora of people?

*Garrison Keillor is a freaking genius. A Prairie Home Companion’s on the radio right now, and Billy Collins is reading poetry, and we’ve gotten to listen to alt-country singers from Australia. This is such a good show, and if you don’t listen, start. It’s a good way to spend the early part of your Saturday evening, or a Sunday afternoon. Skits, music, and a couple of monologues on various and sundry topics. Folksy. Comforting.

*My father is reading, so Dad, I apologize in advance, but it feels like a good night to go out on the porch and drink a beer whilst reading a book. If not tonight, it’ll happen sometime this week. Summer is good beer on the porch weather.

*What kind of music do you associate with summer? For me, it’s jazz, salsa music, sixties R&B, and gospel music (I think that comes from all those CFBC mission trips I took during my youth).

*Finally, I apologize for all the YouTubage lately, but I CAN’T QUIT WATCHING THIS:

The servant came into the courts of the king
carrying a wailing child,
a royal daughter wanting nothing more
than to see her daddy–
not the trinkets, not the playthings,
not her companions, not the beauty
nor the trappings of a kingdom,
but the warm embrace of a great lord
who loved her.

And all guards and courtiers,
dignified and mighty in power,
stopped, silent, as the father
took his baby, who needed him most,
in his arms.

The rumor is that Twitter makes you blog less, which seems to be at least kind of true in my case. (It’s also making me read less, but that’s another story.) So this is a small attempt to remedy that.

I’ve been on this odd salsa music kick lately–maybe it’s the summer, maybe it’s the fact that I just watched Buena Vista Social Club the other day–but that, combined with the new season of So You Think You Can Dance has made me wish I knew how to Latin dance. I can kind of merengue, but nothing fancy, so I can only imagine it in my head. Alas. And speaking of So You Think You Can Dance, only one of the brothers in the below post made it through to the rest of the show, the one in the top video, which was a bummer. I very nearly cried.

…this is shaping up to be probably one of the most random posts ever. Apologies, friends.

My roommate, who’s a teacher, has gotten out of school for the summer, and let me tell you, she’s excited. More excited than one would think. She’s sitting across from me putting in final grades as we speak. There may be alcohol involved later. We’ll see.

Anyway, I’ve been working on some other things, working my jobs, trying to find a house to live in next year (house? yeah…long story I think I’m going to save for another time), so…really, nothing much to say. I catch myself saying that a lot here on the blog these days. Trying to find some way to remedy that, but I don’t know if it’ll necessarily work. Hope y’all are doing well.