Someone I don't agree with is given a national podium? Scandal!

I've pretty much been working, watching amazing volleyball or attending Christmas parties for the last 48 hours, so I was blissfully unaware of a number of happenings around the world during that time. (But you say, 'Wait a second ... isn't knowing what's going on in the world exactly what your work is?' To which I respond, 'Yup. I could tell you most everything important that's happened in Nebraska during that time. Which is, well, not much.')

So I fired up the ol' computer this morning to find out Deep Throat had died ... two days ago. (And Paul Weyrich, too. If there was ever a most underrated 20th-century conservative, it would be him.)

I also found out that Rick Warren has been chosen to give the prayer at Barack Obama's inauguration next month. It's prompted the standard roll-your-eyes responses, as well as an interesting discussion at Slate's XX Factor. (To start at the beginning of their discussion, scroll to the bottom and read your way up.)

It's fascinating to see views I find completely normal, like anti-abortionism and the idea that there's eternal importance in sharing one's religious views with the rest of the world, elicit such panic and repulsion from people who've rarely encountered them beyond a ideological-bogeyman level. Ummmm ... you do realize that about a third of Americans hold each of those views? They can't possibly be as extreme and ultra-ultra-conservative as you make them out to be.

I think the Warren pick was a fine one politically on both sides. (Though I do agree with several of the XX bloggers that Jim Wallis would have done just as well for Obama while avoiding the ire from the left.) But I know, as one of those bloggers notes, that there are many conservative Christians who have long seen Warren as a sellout for taking the kind of stands on things like creation care that made him even plausible as an Obama choice. It reminds me of a classic Calvin and Hobbes quote: A good compromise leaves everybody mad.

So what do you think?

Get ready to get pensive

A few weeks ago at our "college/young adult church group"--what an awkward name to say every time I'm trying to explain it to people--Matt asked us what were our favorite songs for rainy days--those songs that just put us in thoughtful, pensive, wistful moods. Ideas were pouring out, and I exposed myself as a shameless nerd when I told him (and the group) that I had so many songs I'd just have to make a blog post it.

Well, I couldn't go out and look that nerdy with at least following through with it, so here's my treat of a pensive playlist. If, by the end of this playlist, you find yourself staring into space and pondering the meaning of life, don't blame me. OK, yes, blame me.

--Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now." Of course, we have to start with Joni Mitchell, the mother of the moody masterpiece. There's a few other versions of this song, but nothing's as perfect as the good ol' acoustic guitar. (You'll notice it shows up a lot on this list.)

--Paul Simon, "Graceland." Paul has kind of overdone the whole pensive thing throughout his career, but here I think he nails it. There's something about the line "They say losing love is like a window in your heart/Everybody sees you're blown apart/Everybody sees the wind blow." That gets me every time, even though I've never lost love. Unless eighth-grade girlfriends count.

--Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago." Ditto for Sufjan on the whole overdoing it thing--his ponderousness can get pretty cloying at times. But wow--I've been stopped in my tracks quite a few times by this song's chorus and its steady build to the end. It's also great to run to, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

--U2, "40." These fellas, on the other hand, do that whole thoughtful thing really well. They kind of created that wide-open, epic-sounding feel that pretty much all modern worship music is trying to capture. And why are they doing that? Because to a whole generation, that sound defines profundity. It's the only way they know how to communicate, "Hey, this is really important music." (I'm sure James has written papers on this.) This song was chosen over others like "Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "Bad," and "Grace" mostly because, well, it's short, and we have some longer songs coming later.

--Coldplay, "Careful Where You Stand." Since Coldplay's post-"Parachutes" stuff is trying reeaally hard to sound moving now that they've decided to become The Greatest Band in the World™, I really prefer their earlier stuff in that department. Like this song from 2000--beautiful melody, sung well, and aside from a stupid chorus, the coziest lyrics you could imagine.

--Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely." I'm not sure if it's the paternal instinct or what, but this song always makes me feel so warm and happy inside. Maybe that's because it's one of the most unabashedly joyful songs I've ever heard. I especially love the full version, with audio of his baby daughter at bathtime.

--Rufus Wainwright, "The Art Teacher." We're quite a bit less happy now. This song's story is so-so (interesting, at least), but the melody, the mesmerizingly simple piano accompaniment and the French horn solo are all just gorgeous.

--Van Morrison, "Into the Mystic." This was on our wedding CD and played a prominent role in the DVD of our wedding, so it always makes me think of my wonderful wife. (Awwwwwww.) Also, I don't think anyone else but Van Morrison could write a song called "Into the Mystic" and pull it off without sounding a little ridiculous.

--The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows." Speaking of love songs, this one has to be included on any personal poignancy list, if only just for the section from 2:00 through the fadeout. You just wish it would never stop. Or at least go on for a couple more minutes.

--Delirious, "You Split the Earth." I'm pretty ambivalent about them now, but Delirious pretty much had the monopoly on pensive songs for me from ages 14 to 19. Maybe I'm a little too jaded to see the same thing in them now, but they still hold a special place deep down in my heart (*sniff*). The one I really wanted to include was "When All Around Has Fallen," but this was the one I could find online, so this is what you're getting.

--Led Zeppelin, "That's the Way." Didn't think Led Zeppelin had it in 'em to make this list, did you? Well, I'm not going to kid myself--the lyrics to this song are pretty stupid. But hey, it's probably a lot prettier than you thought Led Zep was capable of being.

--Jars of Clay, "Liquid." One of the few songs that's actually on this list mainly for its lyrical content. I'm not generally a lyrics guy, but this is good stuff to ponder on.

--Bob Dylan, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." This is actually a brutal breakup song ("You just kind of wasted my precious time, but don't think twice, it's all right.") But I think it's one of the best melodies of Dylan's acoustic work. I don't know anything about guitar playing, but he sounds pretty impressive on that, too.

--Indelible Grace, "Jesus Cast a Look on Me." I've spent more time meditating on the lyrics to this song than any other in the past year. This version is different from the one I have (a quick Google search tells me it's from Red Mountain Church in Birmingham, Ala.) and is incomplete, but it's better than nothing.

--David Gray, "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye." Another meh breakup song lyrically, but one of my favorite singalong songs ever. For some reason, this song's ridiculously long runtime (9:03) makes it so much more meaningful-sounding than if it were three minutes long. I've never really figured out why.

--Lots of choirs, "O Magnum Mysterium." A classic Nativity text set to a stunning melody. I sang this song for three days at All-State Choir camp (yes, I know--we've already established my nerdiness) in 2000, and I was hooked. I've never sung it since then, but then again, I don't think I've sung anything quite like it since then, either.

Down the road and across the street

Yesterday, the Omaha World-Herald's website had a photo gallery on the infamous grain elevator/boot shop in--where else?--Burress! I don't know if he reads this blog, but Benjamin would remember taking a few pictures there, too. Burress is about 10 miles from where I grew up and has a population of oh, about 6. We used to bike and run there every year for cross-country, when we'd buy candy bars and pop at the boot shop.

Burress is mostly known for nothing having happened there...ever. So it's good to see it get some love from the state's largest paper. The sports section also had a feature on two Husker football players (Tyler Wortman and Todd Peterson) who went to high school together at Grand Island Central Catholic, which happens to be right across the street from our duplex. These are the kind of things that happen when you live in Nebraska.

Teaching through song

On Tuesday night, Dana and I had what might be the highlight of at least our month--a concert by Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace. That's the group from Nashville who are taking the words from old (mostly forgotten) hymns and putting them to new lyrics. Dana's church in Lincoln, Grace Chapel, sang a lot of Indelible Grace songs during Sunday worship, and Dana got us hooked on them from there.

While we were disappointed with the size of the crowd--less than 100, though it was in a small sanctuary, so it didn't feel quite as embarrassingly small--the concert was everything we expected from an Indelible Grace concert, which is to say, everything that a typical CCM "worship concert" isn't. It was simple and honest, with no showmanship or manipulation--just four guys playing good music and explaining a little bit of what it means to them.

Like every other modern worship concert, it also included the songs' words on a screen at the front of the sanctuary. I remember the first time I saw the words projected at a concert--it was a Sonicflood show in Lincoln back when I was in high school, when the modern worship movement was just picking up steam. At the time, I thought it was a revolutionary idea, a great way to make it explicit that the crowd is here to participate in worship, not just watch others do it. (For the record, I still think that.)

Now the words are on the screens at every single worship concert, but Tuesday night's concert seemed different. At most concerts, the purpose of the words on the screens is to assist the audience in singing along. At this show, the audience was encouraged at the outset to do just that, but the purpose of the screens seemed to be just as much to let the audience silently meditate on the lyrics. That'd be a pretty futile idea at most worship concerts--there's not much to ponder in "we're gonna dance in the river" or "yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord." But there was so much depth and richness to be mined from these lyrics that the screens were necessary to process it all.

What a refreshing change: Worship lyrics that are so potent that they challenge and even teach all by themselves, without the emotional attachment of singing them. We're used to using our sermons to teach and our worship songs to reaffirm and encourage, but couldn't we also use our songs to teach and challenge, too?

The ultimate color line is crossed.

Regardless of which guy you voted for, yesterday was a milestone in American social history. Skip Gates, one of America's leading cultural critics, has a beautifully written, moving essay on what Obama's election means for Black America. You should take a look. I'll never truly understand what yesterday meant for Gates, but I think that his piece has given me a pretty good taste.

Say what you will of Obama's politics (and let's be honest, I know that just about all the readers of this blog voted for McCain), but I'm proud to be an American today.

Cue the bellyaching on Fox News.

I don't believe in any sort of institutional liberal media bias. If one existed, I and just about everyone I know in this profession would have to be in on it, and we're all just way too stubborn and mule-headed to be herded together for any sort of ideological conspiracy. (Actually, that's not really my reason for not believing in the whole "liberal media" idea. That would take a lot longer to explain, but this is a blog, and I'm lazy.)

Still, I was a little taken aback at Slate's voluntary internal poll of its staff. Of the 57 people who chose to respond, 55 are voting for Obama. (McCain ties with Bob Barr--yes, Bob Barr--for second.) Granted, Slate is not part of the mainstream media, but...wow.

Slate's editor, David Plotz, tries to explain why. Its media critic, lone Barr voter Jack Shafer, tries to offer some better explanations. Both of them have some good thoughts, too, on the reality of what's often perceived as the "liberal media" (though Plotz's thoughts are actually Michael Kinsley's).

Though it's absurd for any publication--liberal-leaning or not--to have this kind of political uniformity among its staffers, I have to give Slate some credit: as Shafer notes, it has been a remarkably open forum for conservative, libertarian and utilitarian thought in addition to liberal ideas. Anything counterintuitive but worth consideration has a place in the marketplace of ideas, and Slate seems to be the internet's headquarters for those kinds of ideas, regardless of their political stripe.

Not sure I've ever seen that dateline in the Times before.

So I got a couple of phone calls and an e-mail today from an assistant with a national NPR show who wanted to talk to me about the relationship between Somalis and Latinos in the workplace.

First, I thought, why the heck would they want to talk to me, who had written exactly zero articles on the subject? (It was because I had once written a story on conflict between Somalis and Sudanese.)

Second, I thought, that seemed like a really random topic. I know we had our prayer dispute, but a national discussion on the relationship between Somalis and Latinos. Why those two groups?

Then I came home and saw that this was on the front page of today's New York Times. Ohhhhhh. That explains a lot.

Nebraska-VT tidbits

As promised, thoughts from the Nebraska-Virginia Tech game:

--There really is nothing in sports (that I've seen, anyway) like the atmosphere at a big-time college football game. The sheer volume of noise, the band, the student section, the red, everything. I've never been to an NFL game, but they all look so sterile in comparison. (Except for games at Lambeau, of course--I've heard that's the closest place to a college environment in an NFL stadium.)

--We sat on the floor, about 10 or 12 feet behind the Virginia Tech bench, with the other Red Cross Day volunteers. Let me just say I was not impressed with the Virginia Tech defensive players. During Tech's nail-in-the-coffin drive on offense (the one with the three personal-foul penalties), they were standing on the bench and would turn around to the crowd and pose or yell at us. There were state troopers standing between us and them to make sure we didn't taunt them or otherwise interfere with them. That job becomes a little bit tougher when the players you're protecting are the ones initiating the taunting.

--Nate Swift's punt return in the fourth quarter--wow. I had to watch it on Huskervision (we couldn't see over the VT sideline), but that was still the coolest play I've ever seen live.

--Before the game, Erin Andrews set up shop a few feet away from us. She's ESPN's top sideline reporter and the hottie du jour in the sports Internet world. (I would tell you to Google her, but you will feel violated if you do. And for the record, she seems pretty cool--takes her job seriously, hasn't posed for Playboy or anything--though Dana and I agreed her pants at the game were almost comically too tight.) At first I was annoyed because bunches of guys my age and pervy middle-aged guys were crowding around her (which also meant crowding around us) with their camera phones at the ready. But she spent the whole game on the actual sidelines, so that turned out not to be a problem. But it was funny to watch as she walked behind the line of guys leaning over the sideline fence to watch warmups, and one by one they snapped their necks around after she passed as you could see them going, "Whoa, wait--that was Erin Andrews!" It cracked me up.

--That was the fifth Husker game I've seen live, and the fourth that they've lost. Still, as far as the overall experience went, it was more fun than any of the first four. (The one win, Iowa State last year, wasn't too hard to top.) Just think how much more fun it'll be when this team actually starts playing well.

I wonder what this would have looked like in graph form...

A brief summary of my weekend in sports (all times approximate, and by approximate, I mean nudged around for maximum dramatic effect):

Saturday:
3 p.m.: Mets win, forcing the Brewers to win in order to maintain their one-game wild card lead.

5:30 p.m.: Brewers lose. They've just blown their wild card lead with one game to go.

6:15 p.m.: Badgers lose. They've just blown a 19-0 second-half lead against possibly the worst Michigan team in decades.

10:45 p.m.: Huskers lose. They've just been beaten at home in the first meaningful game in the Bo Pelini era.

Sunday:
2 p.m.: Aaron Rodgers, the Packers' quarterback, gets injured during a game against the Buccaneers. The quarterback the Packers turned Brett Favre down for has just gone down.

2:30 p.m.: Aaron Rodgers returns. And throws his third interception of the day.

2:45 p.m.: Mets tie their game, 2-2. If they win, the Brewers have to win in order to avoid missing the playoffs in the biggest collapse in franchise history.

2:50 p.m.: The Brewers are losing, 1-0, in the seventh inning after being one-hit by a bunch of relievers through six. They have the bases loaded with Corey Hart up. He strikes out.

2:51 p.m.: Packers lose.


At this point, we have what could be the worst sports weekend of my life. Badgers, Huskers and Packers lose, and the Brewers are about to blow the best chance they'll have at the playoffs for years. But all is not lost: If the Brewers can clinch the playoffs, I'll consider the weekend salvaged. This is what I tell Dana, anyway. She seems skeptical.


2:52 p.m.: Craig Counsell (AKA 12-year-old looking, goofy-stance-man) draws a game-tying RBI walk for the Brewers. (This is where the links get fun.)

3:30 p.m.: The Mets fall behind, 4-2, in the eighth inning on back-to-back home runs.

3:35 p.m.: Ryan Braun hits a two-run home run to put the Brewers in the lead, 3-1.

3:45 p.m.: Brewers win.

4:00 p.m.: Mets lose. Brewers make the playoffs for the first time since Dad used to swear at Brewers games. (Yes, it's tough for me to believe, too.)

I call it a pretty good weekend.

I hate to post yet another sports post, but Dana and I went to the Husker game, and I'll have some thoughts on that up tomorrow.

A little bit of perspective.

This post is about sports, but I promise it has substance. Hang in there.

Losses in baseball don't get much worse than the Brewers' loss yesterday. They were up by 4 with two outs and nobody on in the Cubs' bottom of the ninth ... and somehow found a way to lose.

Fortunately for my own sanity and that of everyone who would've been around me, I was working while all this happened. But as soon as the boxscore came across the wire, my head was firmly implanted in my hands. A coworker who's a big Cubs fan walked into work 15 minutes later, stopped at my desk, gave me a look as if one of my family members had died and just said, "Mark ... I'm sorry."

I tried to vent to Dana, but with 13 Brewers losses in the last 17 games, I long ago used up all my empathy points with her. So I did the only thing I could think to do to get myself out of my funk: I called my grandma.

My grandma is the diehardest Cubs fan I know--she's been following the team for 70 years. She started listening to the team on the radio with her dad as a little girl in Wisconsin, long before Milwaukee had its own major league team. Now she watches every single Cubs game on TV while she knits at home down in Texas.

Now, calling my grandma was a major violation of the unwritten rules of sports fandom--if your team gets beat in gutwrenching fashion by your rival, your buddy who's a fan of that team calls you--you never call them. To do that would be asking for punishment, voluntarily subjecting yourself to gloating during your worst hour.

But I needed to remind myself that someone--and not just someone, my grandma--was made happy by yesterday's game. And it was so good to hear her laughing about the game, talking about how she was thisclose to turning it off, marveling at one of the Cubs' ejection in extra innings, asking about the Brewers' starting rotation.

I'm usually driven nuts by the Cubs fans' bellyaching about 100 years since a championship. I mean, how many of those years have most of those fans lived through, let alone been a fan through? 20? 30? 5? But my grandma is the real deal--she's gone almost three-quarters of a century as a dedicated Cubs fan without a World Series title. As much as I get upset about one September collapse, that's misery. And she takes it all in stride, just a laugh and a sigh when they blow it yet again, and a genuine joy when they do well. I could stand to learn a lot from that.

So if--or, let's be honest, when--the Brewers don't make the playoffs, I'll be rooting for the Cubs to win it all. It's heresy for a Brewers fan, but it's just the right thing to do by Grandma.

Get to know ... the Beach Boys

What you know: Surfing, fun, summer, sun, surfing, cars, girls, surfing. Really high, intricate, poppy harmonies. I couldn't stand the Beach Boys growing up--those voices just grated on me, and every song seemed so simple and syrupy, like the '60s equivalent of Radio Disney. But then as I got into college, I was shocked to find out that the Beach Boys were actually critical darlings, and Brian Wilson was regarded as a musical genius. You're probably familiar with that work, too--Pet Sounds, "Good Vibrations," "God Only Knows."

After that, it's standard "Behind the Music" material: Way too much LSD, band falling apart, getting involved with a hippie murder commune, untimely deaths, lawsuits, reunions, a return to the charts, a few decades doing the Boomer nostalgia circuit. But there's more...oh yes, there's more.

Get to know: The Beach Boys' psycho, trippy, drugged-out, falling apart period. Yes, they actually tried to make music during this period, and some of it was actually pretty good. "Darlin,'" with its soulful Carl Wilson vocal, hardly sounds like them at all on first listen, but still retains their trademark flair for hooks. You hear a little more of that soulful, quasi-shouter style on "Wild Honey," along with some of that synthesizer trippiness Brian was playing with at the time. But the strangest and most compelling hit of that era is "Heroes and Villains." It's like "Good Vibrations" from some parallel, darker universe. The structure is similar, the production is similar, except where "Good Vibrations" pieces together perfectly, "Heroes and Villains" feels disjointed. Don't get me wrong--it's still an amazing song and a fascinating listen. But it feels like a brilliant idea Brian had in his head that he just couldn't quite communicate to the rest of us. And it feels like a perfect example of what the post-"Good Vibrations" Beach Boys could have been. Friends don't let friends do mountains of acid.

Ugh.

It's been a brutal week to be a Brewers fan.

Stat of the year: The Brewers have come up to bat this year 113 times with the bases loaded. They have a grand total of 19 hits. They have 7 extra-base hits. They have yet to hit a grand slam. Their batting average is .202. Their OPS (for all you stats nerds) is .557. 557!

By comparison, the Cubs (the team the Brewers are chasing) are batting .321 with the bases loaded. They have 21 extra-base hits, including 6 grand slams. Their OPS is .928. 928!

How the heck is the least clutch team in the National League 20 games over .500 again?

According to a front-page story in the Outlook section of today's Washington Post, the guilty parties in our generation's aversion to reading for pleasure are ... their high school English teachers.

It's an interesting premise, especially coming from a high school English teacher. Her idea is that teachers are turning beautiful literature into a rote science by making students clinically dissect novels that are works of art and then write essays about books they couldn't care less about.

I'm not sure whether I entirely buy into it, but I think she's got a good point. Reading fiction was something to be dreaded for most people in my high school English classes--Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry was particularly dreaded. No one liked that book. Being a bona fide word nerd, I was bound to be reading for pleasure anyway, but I wouldn't be surprised if having to plow through some of those books killed the idea for some of my classmates.

What about you? Did you like the books you read in high school? How about the way they were taught? Did they make you want to read more or less?


A couple more stray observations:
--Catcher in the Rye for eighth- and ninth-graders? Are you serious? Not is it (in my apparently prudish mind) completely in appropriate for that age in terms of language, but it's essentially a psychological portrait of a 17-year-old that's far too nuanced and complex for 13- and 14-year-olds to understand.
--Read the student's summer email to the teacher about halfway through. Ho-ly cow. I don't think I've ever met a high schooler who would right something like that to his teacher over the summer, and this teacher at The McLean School gets this from a student who's not even an interested participant in class. That's got to be one of the best signs I've seen in a while that suburban D.C. and Grand Island aren't even on the same planet.

It's all Sir Denis Eton-Hogg's fault.

So I was all ready to go with this sweet List of the Fortnight on substantive songs by Christian artists (let's ignore for the moment the fact that it's been a month since the last list--blame it on the Olympics), and Muxtape decides to be unavailable.

Why? Stupid RIAA. Seems the suits aren't too keen on letting you listen--not download, mind you, just listen--to the songs I own. So now I'm limited to the songs I can find on Mixwit, which is to say, the songs that are already pretty easy to find. That means no Indelible Grace, that's for dang sure.

So I'll figure out something else. And if you got the headline--without Google--you are officially awesome in my book.

I'm pretty sure that the last time I was that unproductive, I was wearing diapers.

As you may (or--let's not kid ourselves--may not) have noticed, it's been a long time since I posted. I'm blaming it on Brett Favre. According to ESPN, everything in the world that's happened in the last three weeks has revolved around Brett Favre, so I'm assuming my failure to update my blog must be part of that.

No, really, I was actually on vacation last week in a rental home in southwest Missouri with my wife, my parents, two sisters and brother-in-law and nephew. Here's what you don't need to know, but are going to find out anyway:

--As the title more than implies, very, very little was accomplished by anyone. I did almost finish a book ... but it was the baseball book I wanted to read, while the dense theology book I had to read never left my backpack.

--A ridiculous number of Ticket To Ride games were played, and way too many of them were won by my brother-in-law. On an unrelated note, two cities I never want to visit ... ever: Stockholm and Petrograd. Thanks, Kyle.

--We stayed less than 5 miles from Branson, yet we managed to not see a single show. That's right--we ventured into the land of Yakov, Shoji and the Baldknobbers and missed all of them. Make no mistake: I am very proud of this.

--I'm pretty sure I drove my family nuts with my incessant checking of Brewers (and Cardinals, and Cubs) scores. But the Brewers did not lose the entire time we were on vacation. Yes, the second sentence of this paragraph has rendered the first completely irrelevant.

--On Monday, my first day back, I worked almost 13 hours straight, with no lunch or supper breaks. Welcome back to the real world.

"So what do you think about the whole Brett Favre thing?"

People who have asked me this question in the last two weeks:

--My co-workers
--My ex-co-workers
--My pastor's wife
--My father-in-law
--My uncle-in-law
--My dog-in-law

The last time I was being asked the same question by so many people, I was a senior in high school and was telling everyone that "Wheaton is a Christian liberal arts school in the suburbs of Chicago ... no, it's not affiliated with a specific denomination ... yeah, my dad went there, and I really thought it was the best Christian education I could get."

So, since you're probably asking right now, "So what DO you think about the whole Brett Favre thing," here's my short answer:

Brett Favre needs to find a hobby. Or leave the country. Or, better yet, take up around-the-world hot-air ballooning. There's a hobby that would take him out of the country for a long, long time.

The point is, unretiring was a bad idea. Strike that--unretiring now was a bad idea. Had Favre unretired back this spring when the Packers hadn't planned its entire offseason strategy around someone else, that would've been fine. (Actually, he almost did that, and the Packers told him they'd take him back, but then he re-retired at the last minute.)

But no, he decided to un-retire less than a month before training camp, and he decided to do it in the most drama queeny fashion imaginable. Here's why the Packers aren't taking him back as starter, and I totally understand it.

Basically, the standards for Favre had been in a different universe from the rest of the team, and Favre was asking for more of the same. So the Pack's front office decided whether their ultimate loyalty was to Favre or to the rest of the team. And at some point, Packers fans have to make the same choice. It's easy to pick the face of the franchise for the past 16 years. But it makes a lot more sense to choose the franchise itself.

List of the Fortnight: A-1 Cleaning to Zymanski. Go.

When it comes to music, everybody's got one aspect that draws them in more than anything. Lyrics, bass, horns, whatever. For me, I think, it's probably the vocals. A band could have an album full of perfectly penned songs, but without a decent lead singer, I probably won't give it much of a listen. Likewise, I'll forgive a multitude of musical sins if the vocalist has a truly compelling voice.

There's only a handful that meet that threshold, where I'll listen with (mostly) rapt attention to pretty much anything they do, just because the voice sucks me in. I call 'em my "phone book" singers, after the old cliche about being able to enjoy listening to someone sing through the phone book.

So here's mine. Listen to the tape I so lovingly put together so you can find out for yourself how wrong-headed my tastes are.

Richard Manuel. I thought about including his fellow singers from the Band--Levon Helm and Rick Danko--because together, with all their overlapping and trading, they concocted an incredible triple threat of awesomeness. But Manuel took most of the burden, and his voice topped just about any other I've heard in its ability to convey pure, genuine wistfulness and anguish. It obviously came from deep inside, as his suicide painfully underscored. Have a listen to "The Unfaithful Servant," and see if by "Goodbye to that country home," you aren't feeling every ounce of his pain.

Rufus Wainwright. When I was introduced to the goodness that is Rufus Wainwright in college, I thought he had one of the most obnoxious voices I had ever heard. Nasally. Scooping. Preening. But slowly--and with the help of my roommate Mike--I warmed up to him, and I'm so glad I did. Rufus (we're on a first-name basis) fits best that idea of a phone book singer: Some of his songs are a bit dull in musical structure, but he makes them not only listenable, but a true pleasure. (Don't worry, I tried not to pick too dull a song here.)

Mavis Staples. My History of Rock Music professor once said that "the only person who might be able to out-Aretha Aretha is Mavis Staples." He was right. You know the Staple Singers from "I'll Take You There," and Mavis is in fine form there. But it doesn't take as good of a song for her to show off a bit.

John Fogerty. The voice of Creedence Clearwater Revival sang with all the soul a white boy could conjure up. And then he went and toned it down for junk like "Centerfield."

Dr. John. You may not know the name (no, he has nothing to do with sex shops), but you probably know the voice. So sleazy. So fun. So New Orleans.

Van Morrison. Another soulful, instantly recognizable voice. I love it especially when he scats. It always sounds to me like he has too much joy inside that needs to get out too quickly to find time for real words.

There's my list--what's yours?

(There's two mixtapes on this one: One here for Richard Manuel and Rufus Wainwright since I had to upload those songs, and the other below for the ones I could find online.)

Yes! Arbitrary competitions involving brackets!

So the Grand Island Independent has officially begun Music Madness, its rather quixotic search for Central Nebraska's favorite song. This first group is open for voting until Friday noon, and the first round runs through next week.

You should do your civic duty and vote.

No fervor-bots allowed

"I'm more likely to listen to someone's opinions about global warming or the epistles of Paul if I also know a little something about what kind of food they crave, which is their favorite baseball team, and how much trouble they had getting their first marriage to work."

From an interesting take on Christian music at the Onion's A.V. Club. The essay is part of a feature called Popless, a weekly feature in which one of the site's music critics is taking inventory of his entire music collection (which is larger than any human being's should be) and writing about its significance to him, his thoughts on it, etc.

He's taking it alphabetically, and each week has an opening essay--this week's is on Christian music. Some really interesting thoughts on CCM from someone firmly outside the bubble, and some surprisingly substantive discussion in the comment section.

So what Christian artists fit Murray's wish list of what he'd like Christian rock to be? Of the ones I know well, only a few come to mind:
Five Iron Frenzy (there's some discussion on them in the comments, if you do a Control-F)
Derek Webb (he gets name-checked in the comments, too)
Steve Taylor (responsible not only for his own music, but pretty much anything of substance the Newsboys ever sang)

You know what--I should break this brainstorming session into another post, complete with a mixtape for your listening pleasure. I'll get to work on that.

Someone tell me how to feel.

It's a glorious day to be a Brewers fan.

It's a horrible day to be a Packers fan.

I think I'll run down the street cheering. Or crying. Or both. That might scare the neighbors.

List of the Fortnight: Favorite Films

It's been a fortnight already, so it's time for another list. This one comes from a tag Ben gave me a month and a half ago. I must obey what he tells me to do, so here goes.

My 10 favorite movies (mostly in the order I thought of them)

Lord Of The Rings trilogy--Taken together, it's a pretty incredible 10 hours or so of film. At least for our generation, it's the gold standard of what an epic film should be.

Saving Private Ryan--This was the first "grown-up" movie I saw (at least once I got to the age where I could somewhat appreciate them), and I remember it blowing me away. I don't know that I've seen it all the way through in almost a decade, but it still holds that place for me.

The Blues Brothers--This movie is as much a part of our house as loud arguments over games at holidays. It's also my favorite musical.

This Is Spinal Tap--I guess this counts as my second-favorite musical. (Wow...Spinal Tap a musical? I think my brain just exploded.) I haven't seen many comedies in the past few years that are just as funny the 10th time you watch them, but this is one.

Disney's Robin Hood--Maybe not the best Disney movie ever made--OK, yes, the best Disney movie ever made--but for some reason it just resonated with us kids more than any other. I still remember when I was in second grade, when all four of us had chicken pox and we lined up our sleeping bags on the living room floor, watching, rewinding and re-watching it about four times a day for an entire week. And we never got sick of it. I bet Mom did, though.

Magnolia--Ever since Mike introduced me to this movie, it's been my favorite pondering-the-meaning-of-life film. I can't say I'd recommend it to just anyone--I almost walked out the first time I watched it because of the language--but it's one of the richest movies in thought and themes that I've ever seen.

All The President's Men--A love of this movie is a requirement for entrance into the Secret Society of Journalists, but it's actually a thrilling, entertaining movie, even if you have no idea who Woodward and Bernstein are. (In which case, shame on you!)

Austin Powers--Only the first one. No redeeming value whatsoever, but it's just so dang quotable, and it still makes me laugh.

School Of Rock--The movie Jack Black was born to star in. I'm not so sure I like him much anymore, but he gave that movie more life and joy than I've seen an almost any other.

Cool Runnings--John Candy and Jamaicans. How could you not love this movie? Oh wait ...

Don't worry, I won't tag anyone. Your suffering ends here.

Read and learn--it might come in handy someday.

And now it's time for another edition of Aesop's Unfortunately True Fables.

Here's the initial article by the New York Times.

Here's Fox News' response.

Moral of the story: Don't write anything (factual or not--doesn't matter) that puts Fox News in an unflattering light. Your face will be uglified and superimposed onto a dog.


Here's another initial article by the Washington Post.

Here's the Findlay Courier's response.

Moral of the story: Don't write that some people in Findlay, Ohio, think that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim. The local paper will blast you for doing a hit job on their town while saying in so many words that they aren't too sure themselves that he's not secretly paying homage to Allah.

Get to know ... James Brown

As most of you know, I love a lot of music that was made a long time before I was born. But the best songs by most of those artists are not the ones that get played every hour on "classic hits radio."

Well, I want you to experience the gloriousness of this music, too. So I'll try to introduce you to a little bit of the music by the artists we all know that's outside the realm of the songs we all know. I'm not talking about the really obscure "second outtake of the fifth song on Bob Dylan's most overlooked album," mostly because I don't know that stuff, either. You may know a few of these songs, too. But the point is that you probably won't know it too well.

So we'll take this artist by artist in some sort of occasional feature. We'll call it "Get to know ... " And we'll start with James Brown because, after all, this blog is called "Feel The Funk, Y'all."

What you know: The Godfather of Soul, Soul Brother Number One, The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business; pretty much invented funk in 1965 with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)"; the on-stage theatrics--capes, screams, dance moves and all; an icon of black pride, especially for his famous Boston concert after MLK's assassination and the anthem, "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)."

Get to know: James Brown's pre-funk period. It's true--Brown was around long before he started laying everything "on the one," and he was making pretty interesting music then, too. You can best hear the beginnings of his move toward funk on 1961's "Night Train." Compared with the smooth soul Sam Cooke and Ray Charles were doing, this was positively quirky stuff--especially the tight, staccato horns and the emphasis on the downbeat. The same qualities were on display pretty clearly a year earlier, too, on "Think." And while musically, 1956's "Please, Please, Please" sticks to the standard '50s doo-wop/soul stuff, you can still hear the deep, primal feeling that characterized everything the Godfather recorded.

The tape comes from Mixwit. You should be able to click on it and listen to it go.

I feel pretty safe guessing this man has never actually seen a blog

I can't find a linkable (or copyable) image of this cartoon, so you'll have to follow this link to the June 24 cartoon.

I don't even know where to start with this one. Oh wait, yes I do--one character actually tells another to delete something he doesn't like on a blog he's reading. Are you kidding? Does this guy actually believe you're able to do this? It's someone else's blog. You can no more delete what's on my blog than I can erase your inane cartoon.

OK, now that that's taken care of, let's address the main point. Have you ever seen a blog that read like anything within two area codes of that? I haven't, and I've seen a lot of blogs. If you wrote like that, you'd be out of readers in a hurry. In fact, most of the blogs I've read are superbly written--many in the ballpark of the quality of a lot of the newspaper writing I read.

I'm guessing from the word "kitty" that he's trying to refer to the phenomenon of Lolcats--but, really, that meme has nothing to do with an inability to form a proper sentence, and next to nothing to do with blogs as a whole.

I believe the tide of illiteracy you're trying to address, Mr. Man, is coming largely from text-messaging, not blogging. So until you figure that out, you're just making the rest of us newspaper folks who don't think blogs were invented by Beelzebub look bad.

A deep commitment from a church lacking depth

As of this morning (maybe it happened yesterday--Ben probably knows), our church officially has a new senior pastor. I, for one, am pretty excited.

After just one weekend, very few in the church know much about him, but we all know this: He's going to be a 180-degree difference from our previous pastor. That pastor was the gentle, shepherding type who knew just about everyone's name--a significant achievement in a church of at least 1,000--visited everyone in the hospital and told neat little parables in mellow sermons. Our new pastor is a fireball--preaches sermons like he's been sneaking swigs of Red Bull beforehand, mentioned hell at least three times Sunday morning, pounds on exegesis and systematic, churchwide discipleship.

The rationale for the change in direction was repeated often at our congregational meeting Sunday--we need to go deeper. Many at that meeting acknowledged that they were afraid to do just that, that they were so comfortable with our previous pastor and so intimidated by the new one.

But nearly all of them said they'd trust the wisdom of the church's leaders. If depth was our weak spot, and this was the best way to correct it, they were willing to submit their desires to the will of God's people for the sake of the church.

I was amazed by that show of selflessness--I'm not sure I'd be capable of it if I was in their situation. I know the transition is probably not going to be pretty, but I'm confident God has guided this decision. Interestingly enough, it takes a lot of depth and maturity for a church to recognize that it lacks depth and maturity--and to have the guts to be obedient about working toward it.

List of the Fortnight: Inside my ESPN ambivalence

One other thing I love to write: Lists. They're so much easier than forming coherent sentences and paragraphs. So I thought I'd make it a regular feature on this blog -- we'll call it List of the Fortnight. Why the fortnight? I'm so glad you asked. It all comes down to three simple factors:

1. Every week is too often.
2. Every month is not often enough.
3. It's a lot of fun to use the word "fortnight."

We'll start with ESPN--a company I'm pretty sure every sports fan in America has a love-hate relationship with. So here's the roots beneath mine.

4 Reasons To Love ESPN
1. Sports--lots and lots of it. I don't get ESPN, so whenever I'm visiting someone who does, I get sucked in--kind of like when we'd play Nintendo for hours at our friends' houses because we didn't have it. As Bill Simmons has written a few times, it's mind-blowing to realize that we're the first generation that has had instant access to footage or highlights of almost any game we want to see. We pretty much have ESPN, in all its ubiquity, to thank for that.

2. Tirico & Van Pelt. I consider them something like the NPR of ESPN Radio. I'm always excited when I get to be on the road for work between noon and 2, because I know I'll get reasonable, sensical commentary and interviews on issues in sports that actually matter. Too bad that's so rare.

3. Serious reporting. ESPN has been showing they're serious about sports journalism over the past few years, hiring top reporters to cover just about everything. Of course, that means they're poaching them from newspapers, but that's not really ESPN's problem--it's my dying medium's.

4. Bill Simmons. Every once in a while, he nails a concept, moment or trend in a way I'd never seen anyone understand it before. He's worth reading about every time, if only because it just might be one of those columns.


5 Reasons To Loathe ESPN
1. Jim Rome. His radio show is everything that's wrong with sports talk: a three-hour barrage of inane smack-talk and poorly reasoned arguments on meaningless topics (today's topic: "Dunn vs. Canada!"). It's the total triumph of style--and poor style at that--over substance. And since he's alone in the booth, with no one there to bounce ideas off of (like another ESPN Radio guy I know), he feels the need to make the same point 14 times in a row throughout a segment, wording it 14 different ways. And I just can't stand his voice, either. Whew ... I feel better now. (I know he's syndicated, but he's on my ESPN Radio station, and his TV show is on ESPN, so I'm lumping him in.)

2. Relentless cross-promotion. I'm never sure whether ESPN Radio's Sportscenter updates fall under "news" or "advertising," since every one, for some strange reason, contains the words "tonight on ESPN and ESPN-HD!" at least three times.

3. Large-market obsession. It's not East Coast bias, just large-market bias. Want to get onto Sunday Night Baseball? If you're not playing the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers or Mets (or sometimes Phillies), good luck.

4. Contrived debates. My (least) favorite is "who would you rather build a franchise around?" What GM would ever get the decision between signing LeBron or Chris Paul? Are you kidding? And there's always someone who decides, just for the sake of conflict, to say something like "I'd go with Pau Gasol."

5. Bill Simmons. Just Google him, and a torrent of hatred will be unleashed on your computer screen. Some of it might even be justified. He's kind of like that guy who tells the same story over and over again at parties: you still laugh every time--it is a funny story, after all--but honestly, after 27 times, you're more annoyed at him than anything.

The (soulless, computerized) boys of summer

As any of you I've talked to in the past two months or so has undoubtedly learned, I've fallen hard for baseball again this summer. Baseball was my first love, starting at about age 5, a good three years before I tried two-timing with football. About the time I moved to Nebraska (1997), baseball and I took a break while I saw other sports.

Well, I've gotten back together with baseball this summer. Let me count the ways:

--I've become a genuine Brewers fan again, for the first time since the glory days of Yount and Molitor. There are good days ... and there are bad days.

--I'm reading Moneyball, the bible of 21st-century baseball. And remembering why I always loved Bill James.

--Dana and I bought baseball gloves to play catch with.

--I'm going to the College World Series in Omaha on Friday. And I actually know who the Brewers' draft picks in the CWS are. And whether they plan to sign.

--And I'm playing Strat-O-Matic baseball. No clue what it is? Good--one box on the nerd checklist you don't have to check. Basically, Strat-O-Matic is Dungeons and Dragons meets baseball. I've never played D&D, but I believe both involve 20-sided dice, so, um, that makes them the same.

Basically, SOM is a way of re-simulating baseball games using players' past stats to create really complex probabilities for a bunch of dice rolls. It's been around since the '60s using real dice, but the online version lets the computer do all the dice-rolling for you--which is great, because computers are way faster than us at rolling dice.

It requires a lot of managerial skills in tweaking lineups, maximizing matchups, setting strategy, getting the most for your money. You play a whole season in a couple of months, so every day you have your box scores from your team. It's good times.

I'm a cheapskate, so I first discovered SOM this spring--coincidentally enough, when they offered their first free trial season. And last week, I completed an epic three-game comeback sweep to make the playoffs in my league. My computer-generated probability-grid 1986 "players" demonstrated so much heart and chemistry ... sniff ... The playoffs begin tonight, so I hope they behaved themselves this weekend.

What this blog's about

Let's get one thing out of the way: Yeah, I know "Feel The Funk, Y'all" is a ridiculous name for a blog written by a short, bespectacled, just barely prematurely balding white guy. But hey, it's the name I've always used, and ... um ... the funk is metaphorical. Yeah, that's it.

Anyway, I'm hoping this blog will give me an outlet for the thoughts pushing hardest to get out of my head and onto the page, and I'm hoping it'll be interesting for you to read, too. Anyway, I plan to post fairly regularly (as in, a few times a week). I wish I could give you a neat little topic or theme that this blog fits into, but I'll probably be posting about a hodgepodge of subjects, including a few most often:

--Sports. I like sports. A lot. So I'll be posting periodically about sports, which I'm sure some of you will enjoy. The others? Wulp, you can skip those posts.

--Media. Being a journalist, it's naturally something I'm interested in. I really won't post about my job, but I am a news junkie, and I can't not post about the stuff I read.

--Music. I'm really not an indie snob or hardcore music aficionado, but I do enjoy writing about the music I do like. I'm going to try to figure out how to embed mp3's (help, anyone?), which should make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

--Faith. I don't journal, and I'm hoping this will serve a bit as a somewhat censored, more thought-out version of that--a way to try out ideas and maybe get a little bit of feedback.

--Personal news. My last blog had basically turned into a substitute for mass email, and that's not what I want to do here. But I realize that at least right now, I know all of you, and you'll forgive a little personal storytelling now and then. I promise I'll try not to be too self-absorbed, though it seems I've gotten off to a dubious start on that front.

Anyway, future posts are sure to be more interesting than this one. I hope you'll stick with me long enough to read them.