Look at me not doing my paper!

Check it.



http://youtube.com/watch?v=e5KMRwLfaj4

Mr. No Watch.

I forgot my watch today, and that makes the whole rest of the day very difficult. Not because I don't know what time it is. There are clocks for that. It is because every time I check my wrist to see what time it is, I am reminded that I was forgetful this morning, leaving out one of the most basic elements of my Tyler uniform for the day. It's like having someone follow you around all day saying, "Hey! You're an idiot! You can't even remember to put on a watch!"

It's not like forgetting a cell phone. That is also inconvenient and frustrating, but I lived for many years without having a cell phone on my person. I have lived for far less years without a watch on my wrist. Forgetting a cell phone is like forgetting to bring a jacket on a day that might be cold. Forgetting your watch is like forgetting to wear shoes. It's that stupid.

I also don't understand people who wear a watch on their right wrist. What's that about? I guess I can go with it if you are left handed, but other than that, I don't understand. Do those people also shake hands with their left hand? My brain can't comprehend it.

Now that I think of it, I must concede that there is something sillier than wearing your watch on the wrong hand or even sillier than forgetting your watch: wearing the watch so that the actual watch is on the inside of your wrist.

What?

On a parting note, here is a funny video that shows that babies are fun.

(video)

That's all for today. Hopefully I won't forget my watch tomorrow so I can contribute something of greater substance.

Watch This.

Here is the speech that we have all heard about, but probably most of us have not actually seen or heard for ourselves.

Listen to it.

Regardless of your feelings on Obama, you need to watch this if you are going to have an informed opinion on him.



[Facebook, click on the "original post" link to see the video]

Tell me what you think.

Good Friday.

It snowed 7 inches last night. We have had about a foot of snow on the ground since November, but it had virtually all melted over this past week, so that we could finally see the ground again. Then last night, nearly half of it came back. It's still coming down. It's supposed to be the first day of spring. But it is Good Friday.

Rarely do I take the time to recognize Good Friday in the way that I should. I can't help but look forward to Easter, but I don't let myself sit in the despair of life without Christ, to think of what that means.

Good Friday is an interesting time, because we live after the resurrection - we are Easter people, saved by the death and resurrection of Christ. And yet, we still need to recognize the cost of that.

Maybe the best way I can think of to look at life without the salvation of Easter is found in Ecclesiastes, from the Old Testament.

Here's The Message version of part of Ecclesiastes, chapter 2:

Ecclesiastes 2
1-3 I said to myself, "Let's go for it—experiment with pleasure, have a good time!" But there was nothing to it, nothing but smoke.

What do I think of the fun-filled life? Insane! Inane!
My verdict on the pursuit of happiness? Who needs it?
With the help of a bottle of wine
and all the wisdom I could muster,
I tried my level best
to penetrate the absurdity of life.
I wanted to get a handle on anything useful we mortals might do
during the years we spend on this earth.
I Never Said No to Myself
4-8 Oh, I did great things: built houses,
planted vineyards,
designed gardens and parks
and planted a variety of fruit trees in them,
made pools of water
to irrigate the groves of trees.
I bought slaves, male and female,
who had children, giving me even more slaves;
then I acquired large herds and flocks,
larger than any before me in Jerusalem.
I piled up silver and gold,
loot from kings and kingdoms.
I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song,
and—most exquisite of all pleasures—
voluptuous maidens for my bed.

9-10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What's more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day's work!
I Hate Life
11 Then I took a good look at everything I'd done, looked at all the sweat and hard work. But when I looked, I saw nothing but smoke. Smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it. Nothing.

12-14 And then I took a hard look at what's smart and what's stupid. What's left to do after you've been king? That's a hard act to follow. You just do what you can, and that's it. But I did see that it's better to be smart than stupid, just as light is better than darkness. Even so, though the smart ones see where they're going and the stupid ones grope in the dark, they're all the same in the end. One fate for all—and that's it.

15-16 When I realized that my fate's the same as the fool's, I had to ask myself, "So why bother being wise?" It's all smoke, nothing but smoke. The smart and the stupid both disappear out of sight. In a day or two they're both forgotten. Yes, both the smart and the stupid die, and that's it.

17 I hate life. As far as I can see, what happens on earth is a bad business. It's smoke—and spitting into the wind.

18-19 And I hated everything I'd accomplished and accumulated on this earth. I can't take it with me—no, I have to leave it to whoever comes after me. Whether they're worthy or worthless—and who's to tell?—they'll take over the earthly results of my intense thinking and hard work. Smoke.

20-23 That's when I called it quits, gave up on anything that could be hoped for on this earth. What's the point of working your fingers to the bone if you hand over what you worked for to someone who never lifted a finger for it? Smoke, that's what it is. A bad business from start to finish. So what do you get from a life of hard labor? Pain and grief from dawn to dusk. Never a decent night's rest. Nothing but smoke.

24-26 The best you can do with your life is have a good time and get by the best you can. The way I see it, that's it—divine fate. Whether we feast or fast, it's up to God. God may give wisdom and knowledge and joy to his favorites, but sinners are assigned a life of hard labor, and end up turning their wages over to God's favorites. Nothing but smoke—and spitting into the wind."

Maybe that is some of the sense of Good Friday. Without Christ, what is the point? We're all going to die anyway...

Thank God, then, that it doesn't end on the cross... that it doesn't end on Good Friday... there's more to it than that.


Jesus isn't just some great guy who died.


If that was it, then what is the point?

Girls Basketball is better than Episodic Television Anyway...

Our local ABC affiliate is in love with HS girls basketball. So much so that they have preempted Lost the last two weeks by about 15 minutes. My DVR does not know this, and therefore, the last two weeks of Lost for me have ended with... meh.


And thanks to no re-runs, I have no idea what is going on.

But I do know that High Valley Christian's Titanettes edged out the Lynnwood Lady Raiders in a 42-38 squeaker.


In honor of my lack of Lost knowledge, here is something I found:
If Lost had a real theme song, a la the Eighties.

Enjoy.


[Note to those reading via Facebook: Thar be a video above. If ye wants to see it, ye must direct yarself to the original post that be on BlogSpot].

I write like a Pirate when I'm in brackets.

Hulu - baloo

A long while back, NBC started pulling most all of their content off of YouTube, as evidenced by a post I made of a video a few weeks back that is now defunct.

The reason that they started doing this was that they were supposedly creating some sort of free YouTube-like thing called Hulu, where they could show full TV shows and movies, but with ads so that they could make some dollars out of it.

It is now here, and after messing around for about 10 minutes on it, I declare it awesome.

Here is a gem that was one of the first digital shorts that SNL did, long since lost...


Check out more here hulu.com

Completely free, completely legal (complete Arrested Development.)

Insight Into the Tragedy of Comedy

I am nearly unapologetic in my appreciation for Garfield. It is something that I have grown up with, particularly the television specials and the show "Garfield and Friends." Yet I realize that the Garfield comic strip is not what it once was. It's rather like watching and aged boxer, a pale shadow of the greatness that he once was.

In my aimless online wanderings, I came across
this.

It gets to perhaps the true genius behind what Garfield has become. The humor lies underneath. It is dark and sad. Poor Jon...





P.S. Apologies to Patrick Swayze for the unfortunate timing of my last post...

This Be Hilarious.

Some fun from Best Week Ever.

Plus, Ben Roethlisberger is going to be a Steeler for at least 8 more years.

And I just might know what city will by on my name tag this year at the New Wilmington Mission Conference.

Musings from 10,000 feet.

Over the past few weeks, I have done an inordinate amount traveling by plane, which made me reflect on a few things:

- There are several people who have never flown, or have only flown once or twice. While I don't consider myself one of those people who are eligible to be called "frequent fliers," I realized that I cannot calculate with any certainty the amount of flights I have taken in my life. I tried and guessed maybe 50, then the more I thought about it realized it could be more like 100, or even 150. I have no idea.

- This got me thinking of how incredible a thing it is to fly in a plane, but how disinterested most people in the plane are at the takeoff. I try to stop to look out the window and make note of this feat of modern ingenuity - that this massive piece of metal is lifting off of the ground. And yet, I too have gotten to the point that I sometimes busy myself with a magazine or something else, missing this moment.

- When you really think about this, the ridiculous notion that a plane can actually fly is lost on most of us. I would wager that few people could even begin to explain how it is that this large, multi-ton machine can get in the air, yet we are putting complete faith in it. We are putting our lives completely in the hands of something that we know little about, that we could not even begin to explain if we tried. When I think about things like this, it make me all the more frustrated when people are more closed minded about faith, taking the "prove it" attitude, refusing to believe anything until it is conclusively explained in an airtight fashion. When looked at it objectively, there is so much in our lives that we take on complete faith that it is surprising how "scientific" we get when we talk about God.

- Out of courtesy, I try to always pay attention to the flight attendants when they are going through the safety spiel, though I am starting to feel that even the attendants themselves are not really paying attention anymore. Mostly I just enjoy watching how each attendant has their own way of pointing out the exits, some more theatrical than others.

- In these flights, I think that I heard the term "lap baby" for the first time in my life. It sounds like an accessory, like the way tabloid starlets are going through their trendy "baby phase" right now. "This little shaky chihuahua is cute, but I need a baby if I'm going to be hot."

I'm not one of those people who doesn't know how to be quiet!

So it's been over a week since I have last written. Alas.

The combination of general business and a week in California kept me away.

But now I'm back. Hooray?

I have lots of things I'm thinking about, but here's some fun for now...

enjoy until NBC takes it away.

Everything is Hypnotizing in Slow Motion.

This is what you find when you should be asleep...



...what?

A little thing that bugs me...

The words "yea" "yeah" and "yay" are three different words.

All too often, people use these interchangeably. Please stop.

"Yea" rhymes with "hay" and means basically the same thing as "hark," "thus," or "Look at this!" - also means "yes" - as in a parliamentary vote.

"Yeah" rhymes with "baa" (like a sheep's noise) and means basically "sure" or "yes"

"Yay" also rhymes with "hay" but means "Hooray!" or "I'm happy!"

"Yea" and "yay" are not the same word with different spellings. Please stop using them as such.

So far as I know, "yeh" means nothing, and is not a word. Do not use "yeh."

And weird is spelled "weird." It is only spelled "wierd" if you are intentionally spelling it wrong.

Thank you.

Love,
The Grammar King.

Another Open Letter to Addie: Heaven, Faith, & Hope...

Again, more in the ongoing saga of the email conversation between my sister, Addie, and I.

Here is my latest offering, in response to this.

*******************************************

Here's what I would say about Heaven. To start off, let's be clear: we don't know. Anyone who acts like they know doesn't know what "faith" means. That being said, I think that there is a big difference between faith and hope. Hope is something that we all have. I hope that I get to Heaven. I hope that everyone gets to Heaven. I also hope that it doesn't snow tomorrow, and that the Patriots lose the Super Bowl. At a basic level, hope is a desire, a wish. Faith is what we do with that hope. In Greek, "faith" is a verb - "pistis," as in "I faith that." It is living your life based on that hope, based on something greater than mere wishes. To have faith in God isn't just hoping that He exists; it's actually living it out.

My point in making this distinction is that most of us live with lots of hope, but not a lot of faith. If we do have faith, we often put it in the wrong things, thinking that's what will make life a "success," whether it's money, status, stuff, friends, experience, whatever. The difference comes in not living for this life, but living for what's beyond it. Now, obviously, we enjoy this life while we are here, but we don't worry about whether we lead a "full life," whatever that means, but that we lead a life that exhibits our faith in God.

As you said, this is not for our own sake, as there is nothing that we can do to become deserving of salvation. (This becomes hard, too, because we sometimes forget this, and operate as though what we do matters FOR SALVATION. What we do DOES matter, but not for our salvation. For if we could do even a bit towards our salvation, it would be safe to assume that it would be possible for someone who was really good to actually achieve it on their own. If that were the case, then there would be no need for Jesus to have sacrificed himself. But I digress - that's another issue - point is that our actions have nothing to do with our salvation). So instead, our actions, our life of faith is for the benefit of others, and for the glory of God. Our works are a RESPONSE to salvation rather than the cause of it. By loving and serving others, we are loving and serving God.

The main misunderstanding of this, however, is what it means to "love" someone. We have used the words "love" and "tolerance" interchangeably, and they are not even really all that close. To tolerate simply means to not actively try to exclude. To love means to actively try to include. Tolerance is the same as indifference. Love is the opposite of indifference.

Moreover, though, love doesn't just mean being nice. One of the key reasons that we have the image of God as a loving parent is because this is such a good example of what love really is. A parent who spanks their kid doesn't do it out of hate (well, a good parent, at least), but out of love, to correct them when they are doing something that will harm them. The fancy word for this is "admonition," which basically means to hold someone accountable out of love. This is how we are with people that we truly love. We wouldn't let people that we love do drugs or other things that are bad for them - we would confront them because we love them. This is missed in far too many churches, and in far too many people's minds.

Most think of love as simply embracing all people all the time - where no one is ever wrong. This doesn't work, and is not showing love of others. In the wealthier neighborhoods that I was in, parents would have drinking parties for their kids at their house because "they were going to do it anyway, and this way they will be safe." That isn't love at all. That is simply love of self, where the parent wants to be the "cool" friend of their kids rather than being a parent. Showing love to that person would be letting them know that this behavior is bad for you, not muddying their understanding of right and wrong.

This is what a lot of the churches are doing, though. We are trying to form a community where we affirm everything about each other, but we don't hold anyone accountable. At the heart of this, it actually has nothing to do with the hot button issue of homosexuality. There is more straight up adultery in the church than anyone would care to mention. No one talks about it because we want to be loving. In the process, we miss the point of what we are called to do.

The flip side of this is that you can't hold someone accountable if you aren't in community with them. This is perhaps an even bigger problem - the church telling people who have nothing to do with the church what they should do with their lives. THIS is the Bullhorn guy. The mission of the church isn't to fix everyone. It is to draw everyone into a loving community. That means bringing them in, as they are - broken. We are ALL broken, and that's okay. Remember, that has no bearing on our salvation.

However, it's the community that we bring people into that fixes us. If we are a community that is truly the Body of Christ, a community where the Holy Spirit is visibly present, a community that is living by faith and not simply on hope, then we are going to be a community that can have mutual accountability based on LOVE. "I want you to get better not for my own benefit or ego, but because this behavior is hurting you, and getting in the way for you to be what God created you to be."

There is a song by Switchfoot called "Meant to Live" that is awesome. Actually, I didn't like Switchfoot much at first until I really listened to this song. It's talking about how God has created us to be so much more than we are currently. We are broken. Christ died so that we could be fixed - not just in Heaven, but here on Earth as well.

Okay... I've strayed from my initial point. Heaven.

Again, none of us know. That to me is the greatest relief. God has promised me that if I have faith in Him, then I'm good - boom, eternal life. More than just hope. John 3:16, the most overused (and misunderstood?) verse in the Bible says "who so ever would believe in him..." In that verse, "believe" is the Greek word "pistis" - faith. Whosoever would faith in him..."

If we live our faith out, that is a sign of our salvation. Remember, salvation happened already - can't earn it, past tense - so anything that we do now is a sign of that salvation. Does that mean that those who live their lives in ways that imitate Christ but don't believe in God outright aren't living out signs of their own salvation? I don't know.

Again, it's not my place to know. I can have confidence in my own salvation because I know that I have faith in God and I am doing my best to live that out and do what God is calling me to do. I put my faith in God to help me to lead other people to that same conviction, to put their faith in God, but that's all that I can do.

Except hope. The Bible doesn't besmirch hope like I kinda did above. While hope may not be the active response that faith is, it's still important. Paul puts it as one of the three most important things we have (1 Corinthians 13:13 - faith, hope, & love). There is a certain limit to what we can do through our faith. God can make us do incredible things, but still there is mystery behind it all. That is where hope comes in. Hope for things that we cannot see or understand.

I wasn't too keen on Calvin before I had to read his big book The Institutes of the Christian Faith for class. Now I love him. The turning point came when he pointed out that if we are to have faith in God, the best place to look is the Bible. If we are to have faith in the Bible, we have to have faith in the whole thing. This means that we have to look at the whole thing. The great thing was that Calvin admits that a lot of the Bible doesn't make sense... and that's okay. We aren't supposed to know everything, not because God likes to keep secrets, but because we aren't able to understand everything. We aren't God, so we can never know what it is like to BE God, or to see the plan.

When you are in the middle of a forest, you have a hard time discerning where you are. You could be only 15 feet from the edge, but you might be lost in there for good. If we were able to stand on a 50 foot ladder, above all of the trees, all of a sudden, we can get a different perspective, and everything would make sense - you can see the whole forest. But when you are stuck in the midst of the trees, you can't understand that.

The Bible leads us to discern God's call in our lives (through the Holy Spirit), and how we should live that call out, but a lot of the time that won't make sense. We can't see the whole of God's plan. We are stuck in the trees. That's when we need HOPE.

I hope that Heath Ledger is in Heaven. Ultimately, though, there is nothing that I can do about that, other than to hope that he is there. Moreover, I hope that everyone gets to Heaven. I would be surprised if everyone did get to Heaven, but that doesn't mean that it can't happen. I know that God wants everyone to go to Heaven.

A friend of mine at school suggested that the only unforgivable sin is turning away from God. It was only unforgivable because you aren't there to be forgiven. That doesn't mean that we can't come back, as the prodigal son clearly shows, but it still seems to be a clear theme throughout Scriptures. A key part of free will is the will to choose to follow God or to deny God.

Essentially turning away from God is actively denying that gift of salvation. Now again, this gets into some things that are hard to understand (i.e. if denying salvation prevents us from getting it, wouldn't accepting salvation mean that we take a part in achieving it, through our acceptance of it? The answer is not really.)

In this sense, I think of it more like a ticket that has been bought and paid for. Your picking up that ticket has nothing to do with the fact that the ticket was already bought and paid for, but your refusal of the ticket is the only thing that can keep you from taking the trip.

So what do you do with this? Try to live out that faith, a faith that will uplift others, bringing them into community, and helping them to get fixed. It's not about US saving people. It's about letting God use us to restore people to Him.

Look at Jonah, probably my favorite book in the Bible. Jonah is this crybaby who doesn't want to do what God is sending him to do, and along the way, God uses him to save all of the sailors on the ship, and then 120,000 people in Nineveh, none of which Jonah intended or even wanted to help. Ultimately, this stuff is up to God.

Augustine, an African monk who lived in the 4th century, put it succinctly: If someone claims to have God completely figured out, that person does not know God at all.

Still that doesn't mean that we can't try to make some sense out of it. Augustine spent his whole life trying to make sense of it (and did a pretty good job). We just need to recognize that some of it will always be beyond our grasp. We are stuck here in the midst of the trees, trying to figure out which direction we should go in. All that we can do is listen for God's direction, and have the faith to follow where He leads us.

Okay, I think I win the prize for longest email.

Let me know your thoughts.

rock,
Tyler

***********************************************

Addie responds thusly.

Super Tuesday

I come from a generation that has been defined by disappointment and lethargy. Indifference and indignation. We don't vote because we are told that it won't matter. Even if we believe it will make a difference, we are not given choices that give us much reason to hope. We are mired in the cycle of not caring because we feel politics do not pay attention to us, when politics in turn have no reason to pay attention to us because we do not care.

Being born within a decade of Watergate, I have never known a culture in which politicians were to be trusted. This has gotten more and more pronounced as I have gotten older.

I have longed for a candidate who I can be excited about all of my life, and now that I have found that candidate, I am filled with a rush of urgency.

In December I got the opportunity to shake Barack Obama's hand twice at a town hall meeting in Iowa. After he came by to shake my hand again, all I could muster was, "Thank you, Senator." A guy behind me implored him to "not make all these promises and then break them after you get into office."

Obama stopped, and made a point to directly address this guy's urging, and as he did it, his gaze floated to the person behind me who made the request, and to a few of us who were in that vicinity. As he did, he caught me right in the eye and said, "I tell you what, if I wasn't going to do everything that I can to make keep these promises, I have no business running for president."

It was a fairly predictable response given for a sharp politician to make, and had I not been there, it would not have had the same meaning that it has for me. Having been there though, having him make this pledge quite literally and directly to my face, I could see the genuine earnestness in his words.

Without trying to sound cliched, I have hope for this election and what it means for our country, something that I have never truly been able to claim in a presidential election. I pray that it can persist, and that we are given the opportunity to see what can come of this hope...

check this.



I hope that this Tuesday means something.

The next best thing to a Steelers Super Bowl win...

Take that, Belichick.



Heh.

The ongoing conversation between my sister and I...

So this is a response that I wrote to my sister, Addie, in the midst of an ever burgeoning email conversation we have had over the past few days. She recently wrote a paper on the "messianic secret" in the Gospel of Mark for one of her classes. The "messianic secret" refers to Jesus' tendency in Mark to forbid people to spread the word that he was the Messiah.

Here is my response to her email, to which she responds here.

**************************

My understanding is pretty close to the third option that you gave, though when I first heard about it (in Na's class in college), the notion that Jesus didn't realize he was the Messiah seemed most likely (and the scariest/most confusing).

Elements of the Messianic Secret, or of it as an idea happen in Matthew and Luke as well (which makes sense, since they likely used Mark as a source), so I wouldn't simply chalk it up to Mark's writing style, though it is most clearly present in Mark.

I would say that Jesus seems to be keeping his identity hidden because people had such a clear idea of what the Messiah was supposed to be (this great warrior who would come in and essentially destroy all of the enemies and rule as a mighty king, like a super David). The entire Old Testament is calling for this Messiah, so the whole Jewish nation is well versed on it, and is really anticipating his coming.

While Jesus does essentially destroy our enemy (death, Satan), and rule on high as a king, he does it in a way that is completely different than what was expected. He doesn't come triumphantly, he comes as a poor baby. He doesn't rule as a mighty monarch, he serves as a servant, proving his love. If people had heard 'Hey, Jesus is the Messiah!' they would have had this preconceived image of what that meant that would have clouded their ability to see what Jesus truly was. He was redefining what it meant to be the 'Messiah,' and he couldn't do that if people expected him to be something else first. That is why people are so incredulous in the Passion. This guy can't be the Messiah, and it is blasphemous to think this is what a Messiah would look and act!

An even scarier (and stupid) interpretation of Mark is that Jesus wasn't God's son until the moment the spirit descends at his baptism, as this is where Mark's gospel starts - that Jesus was just a normal guy before that. This is called 'Adoptionist Theology' and it's whack. It is completely out of line with any of the other Gospels, so there's little reason to give it any credence.

Ironically, where the synoptics (Mark, Matthew, & Luke) present a Jesus who is more secretive about his divinity, John's Jesus is in people's face about it.

Going off of that (long) explanation above, this helps us to make sense of why Jesus gets so mad at Peter when he claims that Jesus is the Christ/Messiah and tries to stop the crucifixion. In saying this, Peter is saying that he knows who Jesus is, that he is this archetype of a Superhero Messiah. The reality is that Peter really doesn't get it anymore than any of the other disciples. Jesus is trying to dispel this image of the Superhero Messiah to make way for the Servant Messiah that he was, and if his own followers don't even get it, that's a big deal. The last thing he needs is his disciples telling everyone that Jesus is the Superhero they are waiting for.

In a lot of ways, Mark is encouraging to me, when I look at how stupid the disciples are in Mark. They just don't get it. It makes them human. Jesus is always trying to tell them what's up, and they keep thinking they have it all understood, but they don't. Jesus keeps trying to help them understand, but admonishes Peter when he thinks he has it all figured out, in such a way that he would be claiming that Jesus is something that he is not.

I think about this when I see things like Acquire the Fire, this really fundamentalist youth rally that uses a lot of military imagery to rope youth into waging 'war' against society. Or the people who carry signs that say 'God hates Fags.' If Jesus was mad at Peter for misunderstanding who he was, how mad must he be at these people, doing things in the name of Christ that have nothing to do with who Christ really was.

Anyway, that was long.

Tell me what you think.

rock.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Continuing my apparent trend of only posting movies,
here are two clips in honor of this great, weird holiday:

First, just the straight forward trailer for the actual movie.
I miss this announcer. Remember when his voice was on everything?


The second is mildly clever. Not quite as good as "Shining" (see previous post), but still interesting.


Enjoy your Groundhog Day, and avoid your shadows.

Visitors.

This is so true that it's ridiculous.





p.s. Lost is going to be awesome this season...

Some funny movies to pass the time...

I don't have enough time before class to do any real work, and yet it is too early to actually go to the classroom yet.

So here is some fun...

(These should be more or less okay viewing, though there may be a bit of PG-13 language in the third movie down - just check your volume)


Of these next two, watch at least a minute of this one first...


Once you have seen the original one above, check this one out...


I saw this on cable TV like ten years ago, and thought it was forever lost...

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

I have to declare something that will make me feel stupid immediately after I type it:

The new American Gladiators is one of the most entertaining shows on TV.

Yes, it is a dumb show, but it's glorious.

I have also found that it is the perfect show to watch via a DVR. In my mind, this program has no host, as I skip past all of the interview segments. They have about as much to do with the actual show as commercials do. I don't want to hear these people talk about how they have "waited all of their life for this moment... blah, blah..." I just want to see them get picked up and thrown.

I think this must be the genius to the show: people getting thrown. I don't know what it is beyond that. It is admittedly quite silly, about as silly as Pro-Wrestling. And yet, I really have no interest in pro-wrestling, yet I can't get enough of American Gladiators.



I also have a platonic crush on the gladiator that is appropriately named "Crush." By platonic crush, I mean that I simply want to be her friend. She is the only Gladiator that doesn't have some sort of ridiculously cartoonish personal. She's actually quite modest in revelry. And she always wins.

(sigh...) I need the writer's strike to end...