The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

… TV couldn’t get any dumber, NBC decided to step up to the plate.

No longer satisfied with FOX being the top dog when it comes to the King of Stupid, NBC made a stunning move in an effort to take over the top stop.

“When animals attack…”
“When yogurt goes bad…”
“Who wants to date a homeless guy…”
“Look at me, I found a shiny nickel…”

All top quality dumb shows. Shows so dumb in fact that one would have to be considered clinically insane to even try to top them. Yet it would seem that Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment in association with Reveille want to take that top honor.

Enter: “Celebrity Cooking Showdown” – a week long cooking orgy of celebrities and famous chiefs.

Now this might be a slightly cool idea if these were real celebs cooking their own stuff, but its not. These pampered near-do-wells are getting one-on-one coaching, a culinary “boot camp,” and they even have the real chiefs prepare the menus and they help them during the “competition.” (note: the chiefs aren’t there the WHOLE time, but they might as well be)

I mean honestly, what kind of competition is that? To top it all off, the winner in the end is really decided by the American voting public? How does that work? I think Cindy Margolis’ roasted duck looks amazing, but honestly it’s a little too peppery for my taste. I’m gonna have to go with Pattie LaBelle on this one.

Then as if all that wasn’t bad enough they get Alan Thicke to host the show to bring to real “drama” and “tension” as things unfold in the kitchen.

Thank the good lord above its spring, I cannot imagine being trapped in the house with this crap on.

In 1992, Natalie Cole did something unique in the music world (if memory serves me right); she did a duet with her father, Nat “King” Cole.

Now the idea of the duet, even a duet between a famous father and daughter was nothing new, what made this such a step forward was that her father had passed away in 1965 when Natalie was only 6.

Using her father’s original recordings, she sang along with his voice to one more his more “Unforgettable” songs. She repeated this technique in 1996 when she sang another duet with him on “When I Fall In Love.”

To my limited knowledge (and please understand it is limited), this process hasn’t been widely used, nor has it been employed in the Christian music market. Well that is until now.

In March, 2006 Bebo Norman released, “Sometimes By Step”. What made it so unique is that it was done as a duet with the late Rich Mullins.

For anyone who knows me, you know that Rich is my all time favorite artist of anything, hands down. I wouldn’t be me if he weren’t for his music. There have been folks who’ve done an excellent job remaking his songs (Silers Bald, Andrew Peterson, Caedmon’s Call, Jars of Clay) and folks who for me just didn’t capture Rich Mullins in their rendition (most of Awesome God: A Tribute to Rich Mullins). As you might guess, I was rather concerned to hear that someone else was remaking his song. On Bebo’s website they have a flash media player with the whole song on it, so I decided to give it a listen.

I was taken aback the first time I heard it as I had no idea that it was a duet with Rich and once again I found myself moved to tears. My hats off to Bebo and the folks at Benson Records for this wonderful remake. I liked it so much; I had to have a copy of it.

Now sure there are ways to steal music streams even from flash players, but when it comes to Christian artists I like to make sure that I always buy their music. But what to do, this was just a single from a CD that wasn’t even released yet? Enter SongTouch.com

Unbeknownst to me (see earlier comment about me and my limited knowledge), there’s an iTunes-like site for Christian music. While they don’t have a lot of the wonderful independent musicians that deserve your support (Eric Peters, Ellery, Andrew Peterson & the entire Square Peg Alliance), they do have all the mainstream stuff for a great price and ready to download.

Even better – they had a copy of Sometimes By Step.

Go check it out and give it a download.

So I looked out my window this morning, and do you know what I didn’t see? That’s right, my neighbors. Turns out that sometime in the middle of the night while I slept soundly in my bed to the sounds of pouring rain, Spring decided to show up.

Granted, this arrival wasn’t unexpected, but I was beginning to loose heart that it would ever show up. I suppose that this shouldn’t come as a complete shocker to me as it seems that every year the story is the same, March 21st rolls around and nothing happens. No Robins, no bright yellow bushes, no brilliant green leaves budding on trees. Yet sometime between then and now it slowly creeps up. So slowly that it comes upon you with such suddenness that it catches your breath in your throat.

True, part of that breath catching thing could be caused by the increased allergens in the air, but I’d like to be a bit more optimistic than that. I would like to believe that that despite my number of years on this earth, I am surprised anew each year as I see the world around me come to life. That my heart some how swells a little as I take in the beauty of creation, the promise of hope, and the chance at a new beginning.

I love how the air crackles with birth and how I am flooded with a cacophony of smells.

To see the birds.

To smell the flowers.

To watch at the neighbors around me slowly disappear in the foliage that is waking up.

It’s the little things in life that make me happy.

So go outside, take a walk, enjoy the world as it wakes up from the winter slumber.

That’s not just a polite suggestion.

What’s that law by that one guy?

Oh yeah, Murphy (the bastard). If something can go wrong it will. This weekend was my weekend for things to go wrong.

I’m not really sure when it turned, but somewhere between the 7:30am and 8:30am on Saturday, things took at turn for the worse.

My story actually begins sometime on Wednesday afternoon. In an effort to be more fit and trim (heck, just to get fit and trim rather), I’ve started doing some exercises when I get home from work. Well apparently I pushed my self a little too hard on the sit-ups (yeah, best place for a fat guy to start, sit-ups). Any who, I didn’t think anything of it.

That night we had game night and I was crushed by a little girl playing TurfMaster (just aside note I did tie for 2nd, but how a 9 year old girl beats 7 other adults amazes me) but I did manage to redeem myself during our game of Pickomino’s (I think I am undefeated to date!). When I woke up the next day my lower back was a little sore, but nothing big, sometimes that happens when I drink a lot of caffeine like I do during game nights.

The same minor soreness was present on Friday morning (though it was gone by the time I got to work) and when I work up on Saturday, but I thought nothing of it.

Saturday morning rolls around and I’ve decided to be productive. I headed off to the Post Office to send off a board game that I was trading and returned home and then decided 10 minutes later to head off to Lowes to finally replace the dreaded double move door knob. Well by the time I hit the Pilot after exiting Lowes I was having a hard time getting in as the muscles in my back really started to tighten up.

By the time I get home, I was in a good amount of pain. So much so that I sat in a chair while I replaced the door knob (granted part of that was because I had to chisel out part of the door for the new lock).

While in the middle of working the knob, I heard a pop and Michelle let out a startled cry. Her power supply in her Shuttle X had gone up in a puff of smoke. I wasn’t sure if something shorted out or what was going on, so I headed into the den (a little too quickly) to unplug everything (only to further aggravate my lower back). So I left the smoldering computer on the kitchen table and finished the door (which for all of our guests now works FABOUSLY… no special moves required).

My amazing wife was very understanding about me not feeling up to fixing the computer and since she has a laptop, it wasn’t a huge inconvenience. I spent much of the afternoon immobilized on sitting upright on the couch. After lunch, my patient wife asked if there would be a reason why she would be getting a signal from the wireless router and would be able to see other computers on our network, but not be able to connect to the internet. I thought that perhaps I just needed to reset the router and we would be good. No such luck.

Turns out one of my other fears had come to pass. We’re several hundred feet away from the Verizon drop for FiOS. Instead of jumping poll to poll and then running across our yard, they decided that they were just going to drop it on the ground and bury when they got the chance. Problem with that is part of that distance is through the woods and over a bike trail that runs along the river. The kind of bike trail that folks with dirt bikes and ATVs like to use. Apparently someone caught it and ripped the connect out of the socket and almost pulled the box off the side of the house (at least the casing was pretty damaged). They broke it good.

I managed to get a hold of Verizon (which if I may say has one of the worst automated voice services in the world) and they wouldn’t be able to get over until Monday to take a look at it and weren’t sure when they would get a chance to bury the wire when they did get it fixed.

So that was my weekend. Propped up on the couch, broken back, broken computer, and broken internet connection. Ah well, such are the days of our lives.

On a completely unrelated plus note, Andrew Peterson’s Appendix A finally showed up on Monday and I was very happy to see that. So I guess all is not lost.

It’s time again for the annual “Stella Awards“! For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee.

That’s right, these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts that happened in the U.S.during 2005. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratchers handy. Here are the Stellas for the past year:

To kick things off the right way, there was a three-way tie for 5th place. Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was Ms. Robertson’s son.

Also in 5th place is Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California- you knew California had to be in the list somewhere, right? – who won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps. Go ahead, grab your head scratchers.

The last of the 5th Placewinners went to Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had just robbed by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to subsist for eight – count ‘em, 8 – days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company claiming undue mental anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish. Keep scratching, there are more.

Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stellas when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the beagle was on a chain in it’s owner’s fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun. Grrrrr .. scratch, scratch.

Third Place went to Amber Carson of Lancaster,Pennsylvania, because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her tailbone (coccyx). The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions? Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Hang in there, there are only two more Stellas to go.

Second Place: Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware, sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000 … oh, yeah, plus dental expenses.

Finally, this year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home – from an OU football game, no less – having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich.

Don’t look so incredulous. Remember, we’re talking about Oklahoma here. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her – you are sitting down, right? – $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just incase Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might buy a motor home.

Please note: None of the above cases are actually true (hence little comic strip). However, if you click the Stella Awards link, you can read of real cases that are just as bad.