June 26, 2012

1. Judy and I have been checking up on our wills. I first got the idea when I changed my life insurance policy a couple of months ago.

            Then I began really thinking about it as I prepared to go on Wilderness Trek with my middle daughter, Abby, and her high school youth group. You never know when something might go wrong.

            (I’ve told some of the kids that if I die of a heart attack on the mountain, build a big bier of wood, put my body on top of it, and set the wood on fire–just like the Vikings used to do to honor their heroes. I don’t know if the kids would go for that, but it gives me great pleasure to think about the honor.)

            At any rate, our wills are in good shape. Are yours?

2. Bizarre story from SI’s Peter King: “Did you hear the one about the man in South Dakota who murdered a high-school classmate 55 years after the classmate pulled a jockstrap over his head as a practical joke? Carl Ericsson, of Watertown, S.D., walked to the front door of his ex-classmate, Norman Johnson, and shot him twice. According to the Associated Press, last month Ericsson told the judge in the case that he guesses he shot his former classmate ‘because of something that happened over 50 years ago. It was apparently in my subconscious.’”

            I think vengeance is best left to the Lord.

3. Could not resist checking out the other day the new book REAGAN AND THATCHER The Difficult Relationship by Richard Aldous. Like many friendships, this one was much more complicated and complex than appeared on the surface. Many times they frustrated each other and they experienced much conflict through the years. I’m still working on the book, but it is very engrossing so far.

4. Call me old fashioned, but I get a kick out of occasionally watching clips from the old Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts on YOUTUBE.

5. Okay, so I was wrong to pick Miami over Oklahoma City in six games. They won in five. Maybe this will get championships out of their system.

*Thanks to Peter King for the inspiration for this blog's title.

June 19, 2012

1. I’m sticking with my Miami pick over Oklahoma City in 6 games. Miami leads 2-1.

2. Wow! I cannot believe Paul McCartney turned 70 yesterday.

3. Here’s an interesting online ad from last month from The Orlando Women's Center:

"LIMITED TIME SPECIAL! PRINT THIS PAGE AND BRING IT IN FOR $50 SAVINGS. ONLY ON SUNDAYS! VALID FOR ABORTIONS PERFORMED BY 5/31/12. You must present this page to the receptionist at the time of the abortion. ON SUNDAYS ONLY.

$50 credit towards cost of abortion. No cash value."

            What a great idea for a Sunday. I’ve got a suggestion for another ad campaign:

            Next Lord’s Day… Exterminate a Life!

4. The other night my kids received the movie HUGO from Netflix. I was able to watch it with them and was so pleased with the product. It was nominated for various Academy Awards, including best picture, for good reason.

            It contained joy and sadness, conflict and resolution, and the joy of childhood coupled with nostalgia. Martin Scorsese was the producer (along with Johnny Depp) as well as the director.

            Part of his motivation in this movie (based on the children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick) he also wanted to pay tribute to the movies of the great French movie maker, Georges Melies, who began making movies at the turn of the 20^th century.

            This struck a chord with me. When I was almost 9, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. CBS, as part of its coverage, showed a segment from Melies’ movie A TRIP TO THE MOON. I will never forget the humor of seeing the rocket enter into the eyeball of the man in the moon.

            Later, I discovered that Melies lost a lot of money when workers for Thomas Edison basically stole the film’s distribution in the States. (This was highlighted in a segment of FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON–a miniseries that I also treasure.)

            In some ways, HUGO reminded me of one of my five favorite movies of all time–CINEMA PARADISO. Both were about fatherless boys who cultivate a rapport with grandfatherly old men. In the backdrop of these relationships were the movies.

            By the way, although this HUGO is not a biography of Melies, there are some true elements in the movie that paralleled his life.

            When I was a teenager, THE BAD NEWS BEARS was considered family entertainment. I would’ve been embarrassed for the language of that movie to be heard on a ship carrying a bunch of sailors.

            It is so nice today to have high quality movies available that all of the family can see.           

            I have said it before and I will say again–in many ways, we’re living in a golden age of movies for children.

5. Robert Caro has done it again. I have just completed his fourth volume in his biography of Lyndon Johnson. This tome is called THE PASSAGE TWO POWER. I believe this is his best work to date.

            It covers a brief period of time–the end of Johnson’s Senate years through the first few months of his presidency. Caro is intentional about this. He is seeking to illustrate Johnson’s sheer misery during his vice presidential years, and his despair over the fact that–in his own mind–his political career was over. He also seeks to emphasize the enormous pressure Johnson was under as the transition took place after the assassination of Pres. Kennedy to his new administration.

            I have read numerous books on Lyndon Johnson. This is by far the best treatment of this phase of Johnson’s life. Never before have I seen so clearly spelled out the challenges that Johnson faced as he tried to navigate the stormy waters during the months following the Kennedy assassination.

            Caro does an amazing job disproving the idea that Johnson’s success of passing legislation–such as the tax reduction bill and the civil rights bill–was simply the result of a nation emotionally seeking to honor its fallen president. Rather, Johnson called upon a lifetime of congressional relationships and cultivated political skills to achieve what seemed impossible. Indeed, I personally agree that he showed more political skill working with Congress that any other president in US history–including Franklin Roosevelt.

            This volume is the most positive treatment of Johnson Caro has offered to date, and he makes it clear that it will be the last. In the next volume–Caro says it will be his last–the author will tackle Johnson’s unraveling policy concerning the Vietnam War. However, in this book, Caro makes a stronger case that Johnson was the indispensable man when it came to passing civil rights legislation. How ironic–the president with the worst (in my opinion) social skills of any other in US history, is arguably the greatest president when it comes to social justice.

            Let me emphasize that Caro continues to be one of the more effective biographers when it comes to capturing Johnson’s complex personality. He relates concrete accounts, which, I had not seen before, concerning Johnson blackmailing a couple of Texas newspaper publishers in order to assure that he received favorable coverage.

            Another fascinating tidbit–the week of Pres. Kennedy’s assassination Congress had begun investigating Johnson’s top aide–Bobby Baker–for financial impropriety. Had that investigation occurred sooner, Johnson’s political career could have ended before he ever became president. As it was, the coverage of Kennedy’s assassination blunted the investigation’s impact as it related to Johnson.

            It took 10 years for volume 4 to appear after the publication of Master of the Senate. I hope that it will not be 2022 before Caro’s next Johnson volume is presented to the public.

            Robert Caro has now entered into the pantheon of the great biographers: James Boswell (Samuel Johnson), Douglas Southall Freeman (Robert E. Lee and George Washington), and Edmund Morris (Theodore Roosevelt).

*Thanks to Peter King for the inspiration for this blog's title.

June 12, 2012

1. Rarely do Judy and I go see a movie in the theater. However, we made an exception last weekend in order to go see the movie “Bernie.” Full disclosure: Skip Hollandsworth, who wrote the screenplay based on a TEXAS MONTHLY article he wrote several years ago, is my cousin.

            The movie is a humorous look at a true-life murder that took place in Carthage, Texas back in the 1990s. You heard me right–“humorous.”

            I would have never dreamed that anyone could take a story about murder and make it funny. But Skip and director Richard Linklater have pulled it off.

            A little background: Bernie Tiede grew to be close friends with a rich widow, Marjorie Nugent. He squired her on trips all over the world, leaving behind their small town of Carthage, Texas. They did not do this on Bernie’s money—he worked at a funeral home. They traveled on hers. Did I mention that Bernie was in his 30s and Marjorie was in her 70s?

            Sadly, Marjorie was not a nice person. She was monstrously rude to all people, including Bernie. When he had had enough, he shot her. The gunshots killed her at age 81.

            The movie’s humor comes from listening to the townsfolk intersperse their commentary throughout the movie. They try to reconcile the fact that someone they adore–Bernie–could be guilty of the crime of murder. Many blamed Marjorie as much as they did Bernie.

            There is a quirkiness to this movie that is fun. I do not remember the last time I attended a movie where so many people laughed so much. (And the theater was full.)

            Jack Black is exceptional as Bernie. Matthew McConaughey is fun to watch as prosecuting attorney, Danny Buck Davidson.

            For me, a real comic highlight was seeing a Carthage character angered over the trial being moved to San Augustine County. He lamented that the barbarians of that area decided the fate of Bernie. They were the kind of backward people who would say to one another, “Put another tire on the fire”… as if Carthage was the cultural center of the South. It just goes to show, we can always find someone in the human race to place beneath us.

            I don’t know how many of us laughed knowingly at the peculiarity of our culture, and how many of us would have laughed had we lived in, say, Idaho. Still, I think the quirky Canadian characters of ANNE OF GREEN GABLES are funny, and I have never even  been there.

            One warning, the movie is rated PG-13 for language–a lot of townsfolk used profane language.

2. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made an interesting observation comparing soccer matches in England with NFL games in the U. S., while conversing with SI’s Peter King. King wrote:

[Goodell] talked about how he'd love to find a way to replicate the natural excitement and fan involvement of world soccer, where, among other things, fans break out in song and chants through the game.

         Sounds like a great goal for the NFL. To me, the way to do that isn't to bombard people with piped-in noise.

            I have attended soccer games in Argentina that are much the same as those in England. I would join the crowd in singing the songs of the local team; it was very spirited and we would all participate. The quality of music was definitely not as good that of a good high school or college band. Having said that, most of us tend to be spectators when we attend games with good bands. Bottom line—one style typically offers less quality but encourages more participation; the other offers higher quality but encourages people to be spectators.

            I think instrumental worship services and acapella worship services are like U. S. football games and foreign soccer matches. The instrumental worship service typically offers higher quality music and generates more spectators. The acapella worship offers less quality, but more audience participation.

            That which we select typically reflects that which we value the most.

3. Okay, I was way off base picking San Antonio to defeat Oklahoma City. I’ll try again: Miami defeats Oklahoma City in 6 games.

4. I can tell my oldest daughter, Haleigh, has left the nest. She is working this summer at Camp Deer Run, near Winnsboro. When camp is not in session, she goes with the staff to spend the weekend rather than coming home… and that is a good thing.

5. Congratulations L. A. Kings for winning the Stanley Cup.

*Thanks to Peter King for the inspiration for this blog's title.

June 5, 2012

1. Last Sunday morning, I preached on temperance and particularly, how it impacts the management of our appetite for food. Consequently, it caught my attention to see a major story in Time magazine this week about “The Purpose Driven Life's,” Rick Warren, challenging his congregation to follow what he calls “The Daniel Plan”. The Daniel Plan addresses food, exercise, and spirituality from a Christian perspective. 

            I learned several things, including: Rick Warren, about a year ago, weighed close to 300 pounds; since then he has lost 55 pounds and his goal is to lose 35 more. Secondly, addressing the health concerns of our world and its diet, “by the end of this decade, there will be 50 million people per year dying worldwide from chronic, lifestyle related diseases, compared with 20 million dying from infectious diseases.”

            It's a good story, and here is the link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2116130,00.html

2. I checked out the new book by Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite, from the public library last week. Friday night I sat down to skim through it, just to get idea about what it was about, but I became so engrossed in it that I read the book. It was marvelous.

            Part of it is probably because I am old enough to remember when Walter Cronkite was the premiere newscaster in the United States. On top of that, I enjoyed going through some of the major events in my childhood and youth through the eyes of Cronkite's reporting: the space program, the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Viet Nam, the energy crisis of the 70s, Watergate, the ascendance of Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan. Fascinating perspective about a man who lived almost a century, and who was referred to as “the most trusted man in America.”

3. I have a new song that haunts me. Actually, it’s an old song, and I heard it again last week in a restaurant. The song is “Go Now” by the MOODY BLUES. That is one of those songs that you hear enough to recognize but have to get your iPhone to identify.

4. Last week I picked San Antonio to defeat Oklahoma City in 6 games. Now that OC leads the series 3-2, I am obviously skating on thin ice. On top of that, they play in Oklahoma City tomorrow night, where the Thunder have not lost all season. I am not going to bail out on the Spurs now. I’m sticking with my prediction.

            A. Congratulations Tiger Woods on winning THE MEMORIAL Sunday. Now, give us a great U. S. Open.

            B. I was disappointed to see Boston Bruin goalie Tim Thomas is taking a year off. He’s a great goalie and a man of faith. The NHL will miss him.

5. West Erwin, thanks for inviting me over tomorrow night. I look forward to us looking together at “The Greatest Commandment.”

*Thanks to Peter King for the inspiration for this blog's title.