The Dark Knight

Image details: Batman fans line up ahead of opening night for The Dark Knight served by picapp.com

Yikes, it's been like a month since I've posted anything. Bad blogger, baaaaaad blogger. Well I've been busy. I'll share a bit about what I've been busy with as soon as I get my pictures a bit more organized. Anyhow, this week I've been slowly getting back to the office, but also getting some rest. Part of "rest" was to take in "The Dark Knight" on opening day! No that's not me in Joker garb above.

In the summer of 1989, I lined up on opening day to catch Tim Burton's "Batman" at the first show of the day. Back then midnight shows were not as common, if my couch potato brain remembers correctly this show started around lunch time. Burton's film is a classic! As entertaining today as it was when it was released 19 years ago (ouch...I just felt a hair turn gray).

When the series relaunch, "Batman Begins," was released a few years ago I wanted to see it, but I didn't hurry out to the theater. In fact, I ended up having to wait for the DVD. "Batman Begins" was an excellent film. I think it's fair to say it's a better film than Burton's, but the two exist on different levels. My fondness for the "Batman" of 1989 has not diminished. Burton's film is otherworldly, taking place in a Gotham that could never be reality. The Gotham of the new films seems like a real American city.

I think the reason I had to see "The Dark Knight" on opening day was the return of the Joker. While the Batman of the comics has dealt with many different baddies, it's the Joker that makes Batman...well Batman. In one scene the Joker even tells the caped crusader, "you complete me." We're not talkin' "Jerry Maguire" type of "you complete me" here either.

I almost hesitate to say it, but the 30 year reign of Richard Donner's "Superman" at the top the heap of superhero films may be over. "The Dark Knight" is quite possibly the best superhero movie ever made. It had me on the edge of my seat for 2 1/2 hours. It's tense, gritty, disturbing, and even funny at times. I look forward to seeing it again.

What I've Learned from the Muppets: One's on the Way

Season 3 of "The Muppet Show" features some classic bits. It's been a lot of fun slowly working my way through the recent DVD release. One song I had pretty much forgotten about is the closing number from the Loretta Lynn episode, "One's on the Way." This number is a great example of the puppeteers using their surroundings to play off of. As Loretta sings, the babies (in an appearance before becoming Bobby Bensen's Baby Band) pretty much just cause a lot of trouble. As you watch this number you have to figure that probably very little of what the babies do was actually scripted. The puppeteers were simply playing off of their surroundings. Above you see one of the babies gets it's head stuck in the bars of the crib.

Here you see another one trying to eat the table cloth. The puppeteers are simply utilizing the various props around them. In fact, as the song reaches it's end, the props they play off of are the other babies as they begin crawling over and hitting each other. Just having the babies sing backup would've been cute, but it wouldn't have been as funny as this song ended up being.

What I've Learned from the Muppets: Telephone Rock

It's been a while since I did a "What I've Learned from the Muppets" article, but I just couldn't resist after watching some Muppet goodness last night. I received a late Birthday present this week of the Sesame Street Old School Volume 2 DVD, which features the classic "Telephone Rock." Besides being a catchy tune, this little song is a great example of progression in a puppet song and how it doesn't have to be big.

You'll never see this one on "Sesame Street" anymore. Not only does it take place in a telephone booth (what's a telephone booth) but the booth features a rotary phone. In this song, the green-skinned, orange-haired lead vocalist (performed by Jerry Nelson) goes into the booth and calls up the operator to sing the Telephone Rock. On the choruses he's joined by three backup singers who also cram themselves into the phone booth.

There are three choruses and something different happens during each one. For the first chorus the band simply sings while all stuffed into the same phone booth. This is funny enough by itself. For the second chorus, the three backups begin some choreography. They actually twist their bodies back and forth to the beat, which looks pretty funny in the tight space.

The third chorus is the part I remember so vividly from childhood, where the whole phone booth starts rocking back and forth to the music. Now these three things may seem like no big deal, but they each keep something new in front of the audience. Each chorus is funnier than the one that preceded it, even though the music stays the same. I often tell puppet team leaders that it's good to plan something different for each chorus of the song they are performing. Whether it's different props or choreography, keep something new in front of the audience so they'll stay interested. It doesn't have to be big. The Muppets pull it off here with just some subtle changes.

I can't forget to mention the big payoff at the end of the song where the operator (performed by Richard Hunt) tracks down the group and has the police carry them off, telephone booth and all. It's a memorable ending, which is another important element of a puppet performance. Brian Henson has admitted that often the Muppets ended things by either blowing something up or throwing penguins in the air. Strange yes, but memorable for sure.

McChick-Fil-A

In the world of fast food, Chik-Fil-A has the greatest chicken sandwich. They're slogan says, "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich." I don't know if that's true, but if not it might as well be.

In most parts of the nation Chick-Fil-A's are primarily in mall food courts. In Georgia, their home base, you can find stand-alone stores all over the place. One of the first markets they launched stand-alone Chick-Fil-A's in outside of the south was right here in Denver. Many of the folks at my office are somewhat fanatical about Chick-Fil-A. We buy the cow calendars every year and some of us even took a pilgrimage to the first Chick-Fil-A (known as the Dwarf House) in Atlanta, where you can actually buy a hamburger.

So have you seen what McDonalds has just launched in their stores? They are calling it the "Southern Style Chicken Sandwich." When I saw a picture of it I thought, "it's a Chick-Fil-A sandwich!" OK, there is a difference, Chick-Fil-A puts the pickles on the bottom, McDonalds has them on top. I take the pickles off so who cares.

A coupon for a free one made it's way to me today, so I decided to give it a try. As I suspected, the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich is a rip-off of the Chick-Fil-A Sandwich.

Vacation

A few weeks ago my wife declared that we were going on vacation. Originally she had wanted to head up to Yellowstone, but that didn't work out, so instead we settled on heading to the Black Hills of South Dakota. At first, the idea of going on vacation seemed somewhat stressful, but I'm so glad we went. I feel like I had a chance to connect with my kids, my wife, God and part of this great country.

I had wanted to blog about the trip as we went, but alas, the internet service at our hotel went caput after the first day. So here is a report and some of my pictures. I'm posting a lot more pictures over at my Facebook account. So if you're not my friend, be my friend...no big woop.

Of course, Mt. Rushmore is the main attraction in the area. The above picture was taken on our second visit to the memorial. The first visit looked like what you see below

It actually snowed our first morning of summer vacation. We took in the museum and movie at the visitors center but decided we would come back on a clearer day for a good look at the mountain. We then headed down the hill to the National Presidential Wax Museum in Keystone, SD. Now there's always some degree of cheese factor to attraction like this, but I actually found the wax museum to be quite intriguing.

They had wax representations of every US President, not to mention many other historical figures. They claimed that the detail was as accurate as possible, many of the figures having been created off of life casts of the presidents. They were very lifelike. However, the Ronald Reagan one just didn't look quite right to me. Of course, I'm not going to know if James K. Polk looked right or not, but I could tell Reagan looked strange. We finished off the day at Putz N Glo. It's mini golf in blacklight...way cool! Good choices for a cold rainy day in the black hills.

My wife and I actually got to visit this area briefly about 12 years ago for a puppet festival. We didn't do much tourist stuff because we were working. The one place we visited, other than Mt. Rushmore, was Reptile Gardens. Here we saw snakes, lizards, and, of course, alligators and crocs. Not exactly natives of the Dakotas but fun to visit anyway. The kids loved this place. My son was especially excited to see an Anaconda, since he had just done a project for school on Anacondas. Reptile Gardens in part indoors, part outdoors. It was still a bit chilly that day, but we still had fun.

The evening we visited the Circle B Ranch for the chuck wagon super and show. We've been to the Flying W in Colorado Springs many times, but this was our first visit to another chuck wagon. This one seems to be run by one family who are also the band. With it being a cold first week of the tourist season, it wasn't very crowded but still fun.

The next day things turned sunny. We spent the morning back at Mt. Rushmore. I took so many cool photos from every possible angle. That afternoon we headed up to the old west town of Deadwood. There are a few interesting historical sights there. The Adams Museum was pretty interesting, but shame on them they don't allow you to take pictures inside. Many of the buildings have been restored to reflect the time in which they were built and there are even performers who do gunfights on the street from time to time. Unfortunately, much of the interior of these classic buildings has been taken over by casinos. On our way out of town we stopped by the cemetery to see the graves of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane.

We headed over to Rushmore Cave the next day. My wife loves caves, I think they're cool too, but I'm always a bit nervous. I never can seem to shake the thought of getting trapped in there, but I enjoy seeing the creativity of God, even underground.

The formations were pretty incredible, and for the first time in my life I saw cave bacon (mmmm bacon).

That afternoon we headed over to the Crazy Horse Memorial. This huge rock carving of Crazy Horse on his horse is far from done and they've been working on it for 60 years! It's an amazing example of the power of one man's dream. The sculptor who started the project has been dead for over 20 years, yet his family continues the work. It's probably fair to say that many of them will not see the completion of the mountain either. Yet the dream continues.

The face of Crazy Horse is pretty much sculpted and work is focus on the head of the horse right now. The museum at the visitors center contains all sorts of native American items, which thrilled my daughter since she just did a project on native Americans at school. I do wish that there was a bit more about who Crazy Horse was at the museum, but it was still very intriguing. It was also very cool that the kids got to take home their own rocks that had been blasted off of the Crazy Horse memorial.

We also got to see some native American dancing at the visitors center. Honest to God, it started raining right after this picture was taken. I don't think it was supposed to be a rain dance.

It was a great trip, I'm so glad we went. The kids had fun. My wife and I had fun. We look forward to going back to the black hills again someday.

A Follow up to - If Craig Groeschell were the Devil

Groeschel is hitting them out of the park this week. Here's a great follow-up to the blog post I mentioned a few days ago:

Make Every Effort

If Craig Groeschel were the Devil

It was probably a little over a year ago that I was first exposed to the ministry of Lifechurch.tv and their pastor Craig Groeschel. Now I watch their experiences regularly on the internet and I had the great pleasure of visiting two of their campuses on a trip to Oklahoma City last November.

Craig blogs at Lifechurhc.tv's "Swerve" site. He knows how to blog, his posts are never too long so when they pop up in my RSS reader I always read them. Today he has a great post called "If I were the Devil" which hits me with some issues that have been on my heart lately too. Here's how he starts the post:

"If I were the devil, my number one strategy to thwart the work of God would be to divide Christ’s church."

That sentence alone is hard hitting enough, but go read the rest of the post. I'm sick and tired of the stupid little things we fight about within the church. It's been on my heart a lot lately and this post really got to me.

Muppet Rick Roll

Perhaps you've heard of the internet craze known as Rickrolling. It often occurs on video sites such as YouTube where a video is listed as being about one thing, but when played the video switches to showing the Rick Astley video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" a few seconds in. It's now moved beyond the internet as rickroll pranks have been springing up at sporting events as well.

So Muppet fans, here's a Rickroll that has been mashed with some Muppet Show footage. If I remember correctly, this is actually Beaker singing "Feelings." Enjoy.

Guilty Pleasure 6: Legend

For his fourth film, director Ridley Scott decided to create a faerie tale. The result was "Legend," a film that was not well received at the time of it's release, but has since developed a bit of a cult following and has become somewhat legendary itself because of stories of production troubles and multiple versions of the film.

The story follows Jack, a forest dweller played by Tom Cruise, who is in love with a princess named Lilly, played by Mia Sara (file under celebrity crush of 1986-87). Jack takes Lilly to see some unicorns, she ignores his instructions not to touch them, this opens the door for a bunch of goblins to kill one of the creatures, and winter covers the land as the lord of Darkness, played by Tim Curry, launches his plan to extinguish the sun. Like I said it's a faerie tale, so the story is a bit silly. It's certainly the most bizarre entry on Ridley Scott's resume. At the same time, it has a great visual style, great sets, and some of the most incredible makeup effects ever...amazingly it lost the 1986 Oscar for makeup to the gross-out effects of "The Fly."

The production of "Legend" had a huge set back when the sets housed in the 007 stage at Pinewood Studios burned in huge fire. If that weren't enough, disastrous test screenings led to the film being cut down drastically and the classical score by maestro Jerry Goldsmith being replaced with a more electronic score from Tangerine Dream. To confuse matters more, a longer cut of the movie with the Goldsmith score in tact was released in Europe, while the shorter, Tangerine Dream version was released in the US. Both are now available on DVD. Both scores are very good, but they are also very different. Ironically, many movie music fans consider Goldsmith's "Legend" score to be one of the best of his career.

I seem to recall that on first viewing, I thought "Legend" was pretty dumb. But just like "Big Trouble in Little China" this thing was on cable TV like every day. I guess it started to grow on me. You gotta love Tim Curry's peformance as Darkness. Everything about it from the actual acting to the makeup design is over the top. Just check out that size of his horns, how could he even stand up straight!?! The great Billy Barty is also a standout in the role of Screwball, but the performance that steals the movie is Robert Picardo (yep The Doctor from "Star Trek: Voyager") completely unrecognizeable under tons of green latex as the gross Meg Mucklebones.

"Legend" was released on April 20, 1986 in the US, it was actually released in most of the rest of the world in the summer and fall of '85. Though it opened at #1, after disasters, delays, and disection, it never really found it's audience. It is interesting to note that if it had waited just a few more weeks to be released it may have achieved much greater success. It's hard to imagine now, but on April 20, 1986 Tom Cruise was not the household word he is today. At that point he had played supporting roles in films like "Taps" and "The Outsiders," but his only hit in a lead role had been "Risky Business." But less than a month after the release of "Legend" came "Top Gun," which launched his career to new heights. A few weeks after "Top Gun," actress Mia Sara also achieved greater success when she had a major role in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And... about a month later there would be renewed interest in Ridley Scott's work when James Cameron struck gold with "Aliens," the follow-up to Scott's "Alien." Had Universal Pictures been able to market the film as featuring the stars of "Top Gun" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and directed by the man that brought you "Alien," well they might have gotten a much bigger audience. Still, "Legend" does have a following. I guess one should never underestimate the appeal of seeing Tim Curry with goat legs.

Christian Ventriloquism in the New Jersey Star-Ledger

This afternoon my cell phone rang...nobody calls my cell phone on Sunday. The number listed was coming from New Jersey, well I only know one guy in New Jersey, it had to be ventriloquist pal Doug Nearpass.

A few weeks ago I had received a call from a reporter asking about Doug and his ministry. Apparently Doug was going to be featured in an article that is about intersting people in New Jersey. A few weeks later I was with Doug at one of our puppet festivals and he told me more about the article. Well, today the article appears both in the paper and online...here's a link: I am New Jersey - Doug Nearpass

It turns out I am quoted a few times in the article, and they actually got it right. Doug is pleased with the article and so am I. Often reporters think doing a story about a Christian puppeteer or ventriloquist would be interesting, but they often try to take a humorous angle. I mean, it's weird enough that we play with puppets, but that we tell people about Jesus with them is just icing on the cake, right? Anyhow, this article is well written and presents Doug and his ministry in a very respectful way. Go check it out!

The Gospel According to Droopy

A few weeks ago I was at a prayer meeting at 6:30 AM…that's worthy of a blog post for me right there. I don't do 6:30 in the morning without a little extra effort, brothers. At this meeting my associate pastor felt led to read a passage that was on his heart from the book of John. Chapter 10 verses 1 -4 says:

"I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."

He continued reading through Chapter 10, on into verses 11-13, which says:

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep."

My pastor shared that what was on his heart was that too often we are the "hired hand." The wolf is coming and what do we do? We scatter, we care nothing for the sheep. Christ is the shepherd, and we are the sheep, but we are called to be more like Christ. We are striving to be like the shepherd. So when trouble, the wolf, comes, do we act as the shepherd would or do we act as the hired hand would.

Of course, in my deep theological mind this took me to images of a Droopy cartoon, 1958's "Sheep Wrecked." In this short, Droopy plays the shepherd as the Wolf (voiced by the great Daws Butler) is trying to get in and get himself a meal. That's really all there is to plot, it's just a set up for numerous gags where something blows up in the Wolf's face. But it is interesting to note that Droopy, like Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner, isn't just playing defense here. By the end of the movie, it's clear that he's the one playing offense as he turns all the wolf's plans back on himself. This reminds me a great passage from Mark Batterson's book "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" in which he describes coaching his son's basketball team. These fourth-graders were still learning the fundamentals of the game, so at times they didn't know if they were on offense of defense. Batterson often found himself yelling from the sidelines, "You're on offense! You're on offense!" Batterson then writes, "Sometimes I wonder if the cloud of witnesses sitting in the celestial bleachers is yelling "You're on offense! You're on offense!"

I'm so glad we have a shepherd, not a hired hand, and that he's on offense.

Super Mario Bros. Theme Played with Bottles and an RC Car

Ok, I have a small brain. I'm easily amused. If you are too, you'll probably love this video of the theme from Super Mario Bros. played with beer bottles and a remote control car.