Recent Movies Rented, Part I of V

So, in lieu of my usual musical play lists (which will return eventually), here is a list of the movies we have rented recently.
Due to our current lives revolving around child-care and such, and due to theater movie prices costing about 100% more money than I’m willing to spend, we are unable to go out to the movies. Also, due to our not having television reception (a purposeful choice, and one I recommend to everyone), we don’t find out about new movies until they hit the shelves in the local Blockbuster, so it’s a nice surprise for us to find out about several good movies at once. This list also includes a lot of movies we have seen in the past, but liked enough to rent again.
I have also given the movies an exclamation point rating system (one, ! being bad and four, ! being best).

Here is Part I:

-Unleashed: !!! 2005; Starring Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, and Rob Hoskins

If you like Jet Li movies you’ll like this one. Jet Li’s character is a trained street fighter who basically serves as a slave to this, sort-of mobster, guy who uses Jet Li’s talent for profit. The action is outstanding, and the fighting style is a unique, animalistic/street-fighter/kung-fu style that I’ve never seen used before.
-About a Boy: !!!! 2002; Starring Hugh Grant, Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, and Rachel Weisz

Faith and I both really enjoy this movie. It definitely wasn’t the first time we had seen it, but we were inspired due to my reading of the Nick Hornby novels, About A Boy and High Fidelity. We both highly recommend both of these books, as they are absolutely hilarious, dripping with Brit humor.
-High Fidelity: !!!! 2000; Starring John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Todd Louiso, and Jack Black

Since we were in a Nick Hornby mood, we decided to rent this one as well. It’s one of my favorite movies. Not because I can relate to everything in it, but I can definitely relate to the obsessive music collector side of it. Plus, Jack Black is absolutely in his glory, in this movie.
-Walk the Line: !!!! 2005; Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Gennifer Goodwin, and Robert Patrick

We both really enjoyed this movie. Before viewing this feature I really didn’t know anything about the full Johnny Cash story. There has been a recent resurgence of Johnny Cash fans coming from my generation, but I still never really got into his music very much. It’s nice to at least know the story now. After renting this movie, Faith and Joy recorded themselves singing Johnny Cash’s “Singer of Songs”. They never completed it to perfection before Joy left, in April, but I think they did a very good rendition of it.
-The Legend and The Legend II: !! 1993, Starring Jet Li, Josephine Saio, and Adam Cheng

After renting this movie I remember now why I wasn’t really into martial arts movies until later in life. The movies of this era had stories with virtually no substance and ridiculous voice-overs probably done by a only two or three people, making what could have been a decent movie into a corny comedy. The martial arts choreography in Legend is very good, and Jet Li is of course awesome. If you’re just getting into martial arts movies and don’t want to get immediately turned off, try renting more recent ones like, Unleashed, House of Flying Daggers, Hero, or Ong Bak before renting an older one like the Legend series.

Of course, nobody cares....

Nobody will care about this, but I went to a show a couple of weeks ago, and ended up on a video clip that was shot at the show. Full Lock Media is a group which documents a lot of underground shows in the Atlanta, GA area. The band I was there to see was a metal band from Austin, called, Thumbscrew, and there is a .0001 second shot of me on stage left, with my own camera aimed, ready to shoot. The band that played before Thumbscrew was a death-metal band from Virginia, called, ABACABB, and there's a more identifiable shot of me (approximately .0003 seconds) standing off stage (striped shirt and hat).
My .0004 seconds of fame!
Go to www.fulllock.net, click on "Videos," scroll down to "Live Videos," and click on the Thumbscrew and ABACABB videos. You could also right click to download them onto your desktop if you have a slow connection.

Pete's Visit

Last weekend, my Dad came down to visit us in Columbus. He had been in Tulsa, OK, visiting Keith, attending their annual church conference. On his way home, he had his flight diverted to visit us.
We didn’t tell the boys that my Dad was coming, so they were very surprised when we got home from the airport. Without skipping a beat, Andrew started breathlessly showing my Dad everything he owned, all over the house. Seriously, I think he talked for 17 minutes straight, without taking a breath.
My Dad Stayed for four days. Our weekend’s activities included daily trips to the pool / creek / pond / playground, dinner at Wild Fish (a very good seafood restaurant, run by our friend from church), and ice cream at the Marble Slab Creamery. Good times were definitely had by all.

Bright

My scalp feels like it has a sunburn. I was in the salon from 10:30am till 3:30pm. That's how long it takes to look this cool:




Let's not talk about how much it cost.

I love it.

Florida Trip

(Click on the picture to view the gallery for this trip.)

Two weekends ago, we took a trip down to Panama City Beach, FL to visit my Grandpop and Grandmom. My Mom was also down there visiting. We've actually been able to visit Florida several times since moving to Georgia, since it's only 3.5 hours away.
It's kind of funny because Panama City Beach is obviously a big tourist area, and it's also a popular place for soldiers from Fort Benning, GA. So whenever I tell people that we're going down there, they're very impressed, but we don't think anything of it. I mean, we definitely have a great time but I've been going down there since I was a little kid.
Anyway, we stayed for four days and the highlights are as follows:
-Daily trips to the Venture Out (that's where they live) Resort pool and beachfront
-Daily golf cart rides
-Daily bike / tricycle rides (A suggestion to future parents of toddlers: Never take a toddler out for a bike ride across the resort when they haven't had a nap yet. Pushing a discontent toddler on a tricycle with one hand, and pushing a bicycle with the other hand, for a distance of several blocks is a lot harder than I had expected.)
-Raw oyster dining (Our search for a decent raw oyster restaurant, or a decent restaurant in general, in a gulf-side city proved to be much harder than expected. One afternoon, Faith and I went out for lunch, and after driving up and down the strip, stopping at six different restaurants to read menus, we finally found a place that satisfied our liking. Billy's Oyster Bar & Grill was a small, hole-in-the-wall place that served us very reasonably priced oysters, craw fish, and steamed shrimp. Definitely a highlight of the trip.)
-Ziploc Bag Omelettes (Although Grandmom is generally a very good cook, but this recipe just had “bad idea” written all over it. Basically you mix up omlette ingredients in a plastic bag and put the whole thing into boiling water. About five minutes later you have a wonderful, wrinkled, plastic bag-shaped pile of egg poop.)

Overall, we had a good visit, and we’ll definitely try to go again before leaving Georgia.

breaking news =)

Elijah turned 1 today! Happy birthday little guy!

Yesterday, he learned to walk "for real". Greg brought the boys home from the childcare at church (Wednesday night is homegroup at our house, and childcare is across the street at the church), and set Elijah down by the couch. Elijah turned to me and took one step, then lunged at me. I wondered if he would walk in between us, because he was in a brave mood. So Greg and I set ourselves up on an open area of the floor, and with a little encouragement, Elijah started walking back and forth between us! He got so excited about it that he kept this up for 45 minutes!! This morning he's walked again a little, so he remembers what he did last night. Here's the videos!

Shop At CDBABY.COM

I rather enjoy shopping for music at CDBABY.COM. They send orders out in a timely fashion, and they send very funny confirmation e-mails. Se below:

"Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure
it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money
can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 2nd.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!


Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little CD store with the best new independent music"

Great outfit

We shot a funny video of Caleb and Jom throwing Andrew back and forth in the pool, but somehow I can't get it to upload to my video server site. I think there's something wrong with the file. So sorry! Here's another video instead.

Andrew really know how to put together an outfit. (Perhaps he's taking notes from someone?)

Storytime

Hey everyone! As promised, here is the gallery of pics from last weekend. (Click on the blue underlined words) Thank you so much to Daddy, Caleb and Jonathan for taking the time to come and visit us. We had a great time. Miss you and love you so much!

Sweet singing

I think that the sweetest voice in the world is Andrew's when he sings. I LOVE it! (Well actually, Elijah is starting to "sing" now too -- I'll have to record it sometime -- and that's terribly sweet too, so I guess I'll have to modify that to "one of the two sweetest voices ever".) Andrew is getting so good at memorizing lyrics now, although he still adds his own stuff sometimes (you'll catch it in this clip). He's one of the funniest guys I know.

Last weekend my dad, Caleb and Jom drove down here (my dad on a rented motorcycle, the boys in Jom's car) and we had such a wonderful weekend. They were the most polite houseguests, and we had a lot of fun times, even in few short days they were able to stay here.

As they were driving down on Saturday, I cooked and baked all through the day so that they could eat their favorite homecooked things when they arrived. In my family, a big way love is expressed is through thoughfully prepared food, so I put together all the favorites: Grandma Annette's Cheesecake for my dad (those of you who have The Roselle Cookbook have this one -- it feels light because everything in it is whipped, but it hits you like a truck if you eat too much!), Vodka Sauce for Jom (my own recipe, based around my Grandpa Sam's marinara sauce and Aunt Mary Ann's alfredo), and my mom's Honey Whole Wheat Bread for Caleb. I also threw together some granola [pecan/coconut for most of us, and plain for those of us who hate pecans (Greg)]

I've got lots of pictures to share, but they're not uploaded to my photo server yet, so look for them in the days to come. There's also a super funny Throwing Andrew video, so check back soon!