A few months ago I posted my musical equivalent of a bag of Ruffles potato chips - songs that I can listen to ten times in a row. On this swell Saturday, I'll reveal my musical equivalent of a deep fried Twinkie - my favorite guilty pleasure songs. Please don't judge too harshly.
Photograph: I've always giggled at Nickelback, and I find this song particularly amusing. Those boys from Canada try so hard to rock while singing about the girliest of subjects: looking at old photo albums. Still, the chorus is incredibly catchy and I could listen to Chad Kroeger's voice all day long.
Lips Of An Angel: One of my favorite memories of this year so far was driving to Long Beach to look at bridesmaid dresses with my beautiful sister in law and belting this song together. (I still think she and my brother should have used it for their first dance.) The most awesome thing about Hinder's ballad is that lead singer Austin Winkler is supposed to be whispering to his ex-girlfriend while his current girlfriend is in the next room, yet he practically screams, "It's really good to hear your voice, saying my name it sounds so sweet."
Rich Girl: I'll be the first to say that I'm not a fan of Gwen Stefani's voice. Or her clothing line. Or her dance moves. But she sure can write a catchy song. "Rich Girl's" great beat and happy vibe almost make me forget that Stefani is desecrating one of musical theatre's greatest hits.
How Can We Be Lovers: While most of my grade school chums were swooning over the New Kids on the Block, I was singing along to Michael Bolton. Being an innocent little fourth grader, I had no qualms about belting out the following lyrics: "How can we be lovers if we can't be friends? How can we start over when the fighting never ends? How can we make love if we can't make amends?" It was my favorite song on the whole tape.
Proud To Be An American: I know it's cheesy, but I do get a little misty whenever I hear this song. Especially if it's accompanied by fireworks.
Wanted: Dead Or Alive: My brother introduced me to this song when he serenaded my parents with it every night during his senior year of high school. You can always count on Bon Jovi to deliver ridiculously dramatic lyrics and this song has some gems. My favorites include "Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink and times when you're alone and all you do is think" and "I've been everywhere, still I'm standing tall. I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all." Plus Richie Sambora's harmonies are brilliant.
She's So High Above Me: Remember the band Fastball? That's what I thought. But I still love this song. I used to warble "She's so high above me, like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, or Aphrodite" to my roommate Holly because she slept on the top bunk. Clever, no?
Love Shack: How can you not love a song with lyrics like, "Hop in my Chrysler, it's as big as a whale and it's about to set sail!" Plus the "Bang, bang, bang on the door" finish is easily one of my favorite pop music finales.
What's Left Of Me: I hated the boy band craze of the late nineties. And of all the boy bands, I hated 98 Degrees the most. So I was shocked to discover that this rather lovely little ditty was performed by none other than Nick Lachey. Yes, the lyrics are inane ("I'm half the man I thought I would be, but you can have what's left of me" doesn't exactly make me swoon), but it's a truly pretty song.
So there you have it. What are your guilty pleasure songs?
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Wesley Wednesday: Unlikely Lyrics Edition
I love lyrics that use odd words. Like "For poor ornery sinners like you and like I" in "I Wonder As I Wander." Or "A love as pure as breath, as permanent as death, implacable as stone" in Stephen Sondheim's "I Wish I Could Forget You." Or "I want to tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot" in Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl." This great Charles Wesley hymn uses two seldom used words (at least in hymns): antepast and dragon. And the rest of the words are pretty good too. Enjoy "Where Shall My Wondering Soul Begin?"
Where shall my wondering soul begin?
How shall I all to heaven aspire?
A slave redeemed from death and sin,
A brand plucked from eternal fire,
How shall I equal triumphs raise,
Or sing my great Deliverer’s praise?
O how shall I the goodness tell,
Father, which Thou to me hast showed?
That I, a child of wrath and hell,
I should be called a child of God,
Should know, should feel my sins forgiven,
Blessed with this antepast of Heaven!
And shall I slight my Father’s love?
Or basely fear His gifts to own?
Unmindful of His favors prove?
Shall I, the hallowed cross to shun,
Refuse His righteousness to impart,
By hiding it within my heart?
No! though the ancient dragon rage,
And call forth all his host to war,
Though earth’s self-righteous sons engage
Them and their god alike I dare;
Jesus, the sinner’s friend, proclaim;
Jesus, to sinners still the same.
Outcasts of men, to you I call,
Harlots, and publicans, and thieves!
He spreads His arms to embrace you all;
Sinners alone His grace receives;
No need of Him the righteous have;
He came the lost to seek and save.
Come, O my guilty brethren, come,
Groaning beneath your load of sin,
His bleeding heart shall make you room,
His open side shall take you in;
He calls you now, invites you home;
Come, O my guilty brethren, come!
For you the purple current flowed
In pardons from His wounded side,
Languished for you the eternal God,
For you the Prince of glory died:
Believe, and all your sin’s forgiven;
Only believe, and yours is Heaven!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Obscure Bible Facts Challenge: Pauline Epistles Edition
After church this morning, I've come to the conclusion that the Pauline Epistles are the most difficult books to teach third grade boys. Hopefully this quiz will be slightly less difficult.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Swell Saturday
It's time once again to laud five more sultans of swell. Here are this week's favorites in no particular order.
The Wailin’ Jennys: My mom has fantastic taste in music, so I’m constantly borrowing (or stealing) her CDs. My most recent snatch is The Wailin’ Jennys' “40 Days” and I’ve listened to it every day this week. Cara Luft, Nicky Mehta, and Ruth Moody make up the pop/folk band and besides having one of the best names in the music business, they also write their own songs, play their own instruments, and sing impeccable three part harmony. Although they sometimes remind me of the soundtrack to a CW show (but a really classy CW show like the first season of "Felicity"), their songs are lovely and melancholy and the perfect accompaniment to a good book and a cup of hot chocolate.
Blueprint Magazine: A few months ago, everyone in my small group Bible study shared their favorite way to relax. I was amazed at the mature responses: go on a walk, work out, read a good book, etc. Alas, my answer wasn’t quite as impressive. I usually buy a giant salami sandwich and Diet Pepsi at Safeway and then eat it on my couch while reading a magazine. (And when I'm feeling really lazy, I lie on my couch and balance the plate on my stomach.) So while my friends exercise their bodies or their minds while they relax, I manage to damage them both at the same time. However, Blueprint magazine helps me feel a little better about my sloth. While many magazines aimed at 20-30 something women feature articles like “What’s Your Flirting Style?” or “The Best Jeans for Your Body Type”, Blueprint is a breath of fresh air. Consider the topics in this month’s issue:
-Bridesmaid Revisited: How to transform an old bridesmaid dress into haute couture with fabric paint and sponge paintbrushes.
-The Cutting Room: Creative ways to use wallpaper in your home, such as insets for your doors or a headboard.
-100 Reasons to Hit the Road: Their picks include the All Night Flea Market in Wheaton, IL, Congress Avenue Bats (1.5 million bats take flight at sunset) in Austin, TX, and In’N’Out Burger.
-The Guide to Surefire Grilling: Did you know that you can grill pizza?
Say what you will about Martha Stewart, she knows how to produce a great magazine.
Hairspray: Let’s face it. Hollywood hasn’t had much luck with the movie musical in recent years. After the brilliant “Chicago,” it’s been a string of critical and box office failures including “Rent”, “The Producers” (which was much better than critics would have you believe), the painfully tedious “Dreamgirls”, and in a strange way, "Spiderman 3". I thought “Hairspray” would be another nail in the movie musical’s coffin. I was wrong. “Hairspray” is my favorite movie of the summer and perhaps my favorite movie of the year so far. It’s a master class on how to make a movie musical (take notes, “Dreamgirls”) and I couldn’t stop smiling the entire two hours. The visuals were stunning, the choreography was brilliant, it was both sweet and sardonic, and John Travolta was a revelation. And with Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd" currently in production, I'd say that the future of the movie musical looks pretty bright.
Threadless: This website combines two of my great loves: capitalism and democracy. Anyone can submit a t-shirt design, the public votes on their favorites and Threadless posts the winners each week, which you can purchase for about $15. My current favorite is the "I Listen To Bands That Don't Even Exist Yet" shirt.
The Following Quote: Here’s how writer-producer Al Jean sums up “The Simpsons Movie” in Entertainment Weekly, “As an event, I think it’ll be somewhere between Sgt. Pepper’s the album and Sgt. Pepper’s the movie.”
The Wailin’ Jennys: My mom has fantastic taste in music, so I’m constantly borrowing (or stealing) her CDs. My most recent snatch is The Wailin’ Jennys' “40 Days” and I’ve listened to it every day this week. Cara Luft, Nicky Mehta, and Ruth Moody make up the pop/folk band and besides having one of the best names in the music business, they also write their own songs, play their own instruments, and sing impeccable three part harmony. Although they sometimes remind me of the soundtrack to a CW show (but a really classy CW show like the first season of "Felicity"), their songs are lovely and melancholy and the perfect accompaniment to a good book and a cup of hot chocolate.
Blueprint Magazine: A few months ago, everyone in my small group Bible study shared their favorite way to relax. I was amazed at the mature responses: go on a walk, work out, read a good book, etc. Alas, my answer wasn’t quite as impressive. I usually buy a giant salami sandwich and Diet Pepsi at Safeway and then eat it on my couch while reading a magazine. (And when I'm feeling really lazy, I lie on my couch and balance the plate on my stomach.) So while my friends exercise their bodies or their minds while they relax, I manage to damage them both at the same time. However, Blueprint magazine helps me feel a little better about my sloth. While many magazines aimed at 20-30 something women feature articles like “What’s Your Flirting Style?” or “The Best Jeans for Your Body Type”, Blueprint is a breath of fresh air. Consider the topics in this month’s issue:
-Bridesmaid Revisited: How to transform an old bridesmaid dress into haute couture with fabric paint and sponge paintbrushes.
-The Cutting Room: Creative ways to use wallpaper in your home, such as insets for your doors or a headboard.
-100 Reasons to Hit the Road: Their picks include the All Night Flea Market in Wheaton, IL, Congress Avenue Bats (1.5 million bats take flight at sunset) in Austin, TX, and In’N’Out Burger.
-The Guide to Surefire Grilling: Did you know that you can grill pizza?
Say what you will about Martha Stewart, she knows how to produce a great magazine.
Hairspray: Let’s face it. Hollywood hasn’t had much luck with the movie musical in recent years. After the brilliant “Chicago,” it’s been a string of critical and box office failures including “Rent”, “The Producers” (which was much better than critics would have you believe), the painfully tedious “Dreamgirls”, and in a strange way, "Spiderman 3". I thought “Hairspray” would be another nail in the movie musical’s coffin. I was wrong. “Hairspray” is my favorite movie of the summer and perhaps my favorite movie of the year so far. It’s a master class on how to make a movie musical (take notes, “Dreamgirls”) and I couldn’t stop smiling the entire two hours. The visuals were stunning, the choreography was brilliant, it was both sweet and sardonic, and John Travolta was a revelation. And with Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd" currently in production, I'd say that the future of the movie musical looks pretty bright.
Threadless: This website combines two of my great loves: capitalism and democracy. Anyone can submit a t-shirt design, the public votes on their favorites and Threadless posts the winners each week, which you can purchase for about $15. My current favorite is the "I Listen To Bands That Don't Even Exist Yet" shirt.
The Following Quote: Here’s how writer-producer Al Jean sums up “The Simpsons Movie” in Entertainment Weekly, “As an event, I think it’ll be somewhere between Sgt. Pepper’s the album and Sgt. Pepper’s the movie.”
Thursday, July 19, 2007
100 Ways To Confuse A Child: Lesson 32
I find that whenever I try to be exceptionally clever in my Sunday school lessons, I end up skewing children's theology.
I taught the kids about Paul and Lydia a few months ago and had the brilliant idea of using dipping something into dye as a picture of water baptism. I now wonder if my primary motivation for giving this example was the fact that I thought tie-dying socks would be super fun. In any case, the kids were pretty confused and over the next month whenever I asked, "What is baptism?" one little boy always confidently replied, "It's when you dip yourself in dye." Sigh.
Ben Witherington III probably never had a Sunday school teacher with a sick need to tie-dye socks, thus he has a solid grasp on the meaning of baptism and a new book called "Troubled Waters: Rethinking the Theology of Baptism."
Check out this link for a few of his thoughts on the subject and let me know what you think.
I taught the kids about Paul and Lydia a few months ago and had the brilliant idea of using dipping something into dye as a picture of water baptism. I now wonder if my primary motivation for giving this example was the fact that I thought tie-dying socks would be super fun. In any case, the kids were pretty confused and over the next month whenever I asked, "What is baptism?" one little boy always confidently replied, "It's when you dip yourself in dye." Sigh.
Ben Witherington III probably never had a Sunday school teacher with a sick need to tie-dye socks, thus he has a solid grasp on the meaning of baptism and a new book called "Troubled Waters: Rethinking the Theology of Baptism."
Check out this link for a few of his thoughts on the subject and let me know what you think.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Hit 'Em Up Style
Elements of Style, that is.
I consider myself a classic Type A personality, but lately I’ve wondered if that only applies to the insignificant areas of my life. For instance, I’ll spend two hours agonizing over a font for a flier, but take a year to compose a thank you note. I can’t stand misplaced apostrophes, but have the worst time returning library books when they’re due. I must hang my towels so the tags face inward, but can’t use my trunk because it’s full of year old craft supplies.
One of my more trivial obsessions is writing and grammar and William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White are my heroes. Their classic, “The Elements of Style” is chock full of delightfully phrased advice about style, misused words and expressions, basic rules of grammar, principles of composition and more. So in the interest of good writing everywhere, I decided to share a few of my favorite quotes.
Write with Nouns and Verbs.
“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place . . . it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color.” (page 71)
Avoid the Use of Qualifiers.
“Rather, very, little, pretty – these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.” (page 73)
Put Statements in Positive Form.
“Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.” For example: “He was not very often on time” versus “He usually came late.” (page 19)
Omit Needless Words.
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” Examples include “her story is a strange one” versus “her story is strange” or “owing to the fact that” versus “since.” (page 23)
I consider myself a classic Type A personality, but lately I’ve wondered if that only applies to the insignificant areas of my life. For instance, I’ll spend two hours agonizing over a font for a flier, but take a year to compose a thank you note. I can’t stand misplaced apostrophes, but have the worst time returning library books when they’re due. I must hang my towels so the tags face inward, but can’t use my trunk because it’s full of year old craft supplies.
One of my more trivial obsessions is writing and grammar and William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White are my heroes. Their classic, “The Elements of Style” is chock full of delightfully phrased advice about style, misused words and expressions, basic rules of grammar, principles of composition and more. So in the interest of good writing everywhere, I decided to share a few of my favorite quotes.
Write with Nouns and Verbs.
“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place . . . it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color.” (page 71)
Avoid the Use of Qualifiers.
“Rather, very, little, pretty – these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.” (page 73)
Put Statements in Positive Form.
“Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.” For example: “He was not very often on time” versus “He usually came late.” (page 19)
Omit Needless Words.
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” Examples include “her story is a strange one” versus “her story is strange” or “owing to the fact that” versus “since.” (page 23)
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody, Everywhere!
Given that I moved into my own place almost five years ago, I realized that it was probably time for me to clean out my old room. During the process I found a few treasures from my youth and I thought sharing them with you would help mortify my pride. Let the humbling begin!
Ah, another Dickensian Christmas with the Bruces. I often wonder what happened to that beautiful white fireplace.
A page from a little book I made at Pioneer Girls in third grade. Sadly, my handwriting still looks like this.
Prom 1997. My date and I made our entire group about two hours late when we decided to order the dessert sampler.
My first attempt at keeping a diary. It was an utter failure, considering that my first entry is dated four years later.
My brother as "Indiana Jeff" at the very first Camp O' Fun. Of all the incomprehensible skit plots we've had, this one takes the cake.
A Japanese print I made in art class in fourth grade. I especially like my music note stamp. If only someone had encouraged my artistic talent, who knows where I'd be today?
At the end of junior year, I had the brilliant idea of packing up all my bedding a day too soon. This was the result.
My official nickname during summer musicals.
My first big ballet recital picture. I particularly like the lovely silk plant in the background.
A thank you note from one of my first events as a Children's Director. I'm still proud of the fact that my party was the best time ever in a child's whole life.
A page from a college notebook. It appears to have served dual purposes: Greek drill sheet and lipstick blotter.
Ah, another Dickensian Christmas with the Bruces. I often wonder what happened to that beautiful white fireplace.
A page from a little book I made at Pioneer Girls in third grade. Sadly, my handwriting still looks like this.
Prom 1997. My date and I made our entire group about two hours late when we decided to order the dessert sampler.
My first attempt at keeping a diary. It was an utter failure, considering that my first entry is dated four years later.
My brother as "Indiana Jeff" at the very first Camp O' Fun. Of all the incomprehensible skit plots we've had, this one takes the cake.
A Japanese print I made in art class in fourth grade. I especially like my music note stamp. If only someone had encouraged my artistic talent, who knows where I'd be today?
At the end of junior year, I had the brilliant idea of packing up all my bedding a day too soon. This was the result.
My official nickname during summer musicals.
My first big ballet recital picture. I particularly like the lovely silk plant in the background.
A thank you note from one of my first events as a Children's Director. I'm still proud of the fact that my party was the best time ever in a child's whole life.
A page from a college notebook. It appears to have served dual purposes: Greek drill sheet and lipstick blotter.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Obscure Bible Facts Challenge: Children Edition
For the three of you who may have worried that I'd given up blogging forever, never fear! I've been living in the land of Camp O' Fun for a few weeks now, but I'm back and ready to blog. After spending the last week with ninety first through fifth graders, I was inspired to write a little Bible quiz about children. Enjoy!
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