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How does it look???

own it

Anne Lamott will be here in Seattle TONIGHT!  She’ll be reading from her new book, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, at the famed Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park.  The event starts at 7pm, but get there early as I’m sure it will be packed. 

own Grace (Eventually)

Today, the world rejoices as we celebrate the **th anniversary of my lovely wife’s birth, and to her, I say . . .

You’re the light of my life.

I love you.

This is oddly funny and tragic and makes me fear that it is real.

By the way, more information about the three groups I mentioned in the article can be found below.   I sincerely hope you’ll check them out and perhaps be encouraged to participate with them!

My friend Steven ( Two and Two Make Five) works with ServLife in South Africa

My old quasi-boss Tom Davis is with Children’s HopeChest, working with orphans in Russia and Africa.  His video diary of his trip to Swaziland is available here.

Invisible Children – powerful documentary about children soldiers in Africa. 

To do so, especially for the sake of clinging to our last grasps of American naivety is to do an incredible disservice to the reality that Africa is facing.  Despite the attempts of people like my friends Steven in South Africa and Tom Davis and Children’s HopeChest in Swaziland, as well as the work of the people behind Invisible Children, it has still been hard to personalize the struggles of a land and people so foreign to myself.   The combination of reading A Long Way Gone, as well as hearing Ishmael Beah in person, got my attention the way nothing else has, and I can only hope that I can remain motivated to do something about it. 

Here’s a link to a clip from Ishmael’s appearance on The Daily Show.  It’s a testimony to the book to hear Jon  Stewart say, "It made my heart hurt."

1. scan through your itunes or cd library. refamiliarize yourself with the nooks and crannies of your musical options.
2. identify five categories  or genres, if you will, of music. these
should be as obscure and finely-articulated as you would like. feel free to
use modifiers liberally.
3. nominate a perfect song€ for each category.
include a link for each song to something (the amazon page for the CD,
or the artist’s website, or whatever). you may find it easier, as i
did, to find perfect songs€, and craft categories or genres around
them.
4. ideally, some of the songs will be nominally obscure, or, at least,
not completely mainstream and overplayed. no need to tell us all about
songs we all know!

and without further ado, here they are:

1.  the best worship song sung (and covered by) two artists that would otherwise be appalled to find themselves in church: "Love Reign O’er Me" – The Who (covered by Pearl Jam as their fan club exclusive.  Eddie Vedder PWNS this song)

2.  the best song for walking along a rainy beach with your significant other while you’re discussing an important decision: "747" – Kent

3.  the song that makes me want to leave on a road trip with no destination: "I Woke Up In A Car" – Something Corporate

4.  the best song by a band that never really existed and has since reached legendary status among the sub-group of kids that were really into indie Christian rock in the mid-nineties: "Pancake Batter Girl" – Almonzo 

5.  the best song that masquarades as avant garde free jazz but is really irritating elitist subterranean indie and whose chorus will stick in your head for all eternity: "Panda Panda Panda" – Deerhoof

Bonus: the best song for Mariah Carey to cover after getting sloshed on Arbor Mist at a cheap Karoke bar in New Jersey: "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" – The Darkness 

I think I’m going to revisit this topic from time to time – I had a blast trying to create genres for songs that I was desperately trying to get on this list. 

and with this, I tag Wahba,

Erick, Jacob, and  Kirk (and Nolan, if you have a blog)