tj scott.. you tha man!! (and an honorable mention to jim whaley too!)

i've gotten a number of great compliments about my bloghead, and i wanted to give all credit where all credit is due. the minute i decided on a title for the blog, i had this image in my mind of a 50-something model cadillac. i searched around until i found just what i was looking for (although i'd have preferred a black one instead of red, but it was the exact profile of the car that i envisioned in my head... plus, with the black template i'm using [another great tj scott idea] a black caddy would have been almost invisible). i used that pic in my first posting, and was in dad's place the next day and was kind of wishing out loud that i was talented and knowledgable enough to figure out how to put that pic in my header.

jim whaley, never one to sit on a good idea, told tj what i was thinking about, and tj took the ball (or the cadillac in this case) and ran with it. the highway scene that takes up the majority of the header was all tj's brainchild, and it really does look awesome! i would never have thought of adding that element, but its so much cooler than just having the car acros the top of the page.

so be sure to drop some compliments on their blogs for making it happen for me... and if you talk real nice and buy him lots of drinks from dad's, i bet tj'd hook you up too! in fact if you havent seen tj's bloghead, click his link to the right and check it out too!

THANKS TJ AND JIM!!

Jesus on the cutting room floor

news item: NBC SLICES AND DICES VEGGIE TALES

in a nutshell, nbc has picked up veggie tales for its saturday morning cartoon block. i feel certain that phil vischer, veggie tales creator, saw a great opportunity to put some God-honoring, moral and decent fare on network television, and he jumped on it... maybe it looked like such a great opportunity that he moved a little too fast, and didnt dot all his i's and cross all his t's before signing on the dotted line. because veggie tales is a straight-to-dvd production, naturally some editing would have to be done for commercial-heavy network television viewing. apparently what ol' phil possibly failed to consider was what the peacock network would want to see left out of the final product. he says they originally told him only the bible verse at the end would have to go, but now everything "God" about veggie tales is history (on saturday mornings that is). so, some folks are moaning and groaning about how mean nbc is, and how double-minded they are, and how anti-God hollywood is.

and while all that's true, is anybody really surprised?? what did people expect? i know phil vischer and the rest of the crew over at big idea have more talent in the little finger of their non-mouse hand than i do in my entire body. but if i ever were to stumble upon a Godly idea so fantastic that any network or cable company would consider wanting it, i think i'd be danged sure that i had an iron-clad contract and full creative control.

as the article mentioned (well its more of an op-ed piece than an article), this is the same nbc that fought tooth and nail for the "right" to use the f-word on the golden globes. maybe that would lead one to believe that God would be pretty safe territory for kids on a saturday morning. me, i was more shocked that phil vischer was caught off guard than i was at how hard the nbc censors slammed their jack-booted foot down on his neck. heck, even don wildmon hasnt sent me an email and a petition to sign on this one, and he gets pretty worked up about stuff that should be pretty obvious to us all by now.

but this is all just a drop of water in the ocean, friends. we're still by far the freest country on earth (for more on this, read this excellent post from tj scott). nobody's kicked in the doors to our churches yet, and that day is still a long ways off (unless God gets as tired of us as He used to get with israel, and humbles us good when we least expect it).

i'm afraid that phil vischer has cast his pearls before swine on this one, and that's too bad. it really was a great opportunity, and maybe theres a few lessons for the rest of us in the Christian community to glean from this unfortunate turn of events. as Jesus told His disciples when He sent them out in matthew 10:16, "...be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." here's praying that we all heed that instruction as we go out to shine our light in a dark and treacherous world.

speaking of road trips...

i want to take a minute to thank my friend and purveyor of caffeine, jim whaley, for his kind words and his warm welcome to the blogosphere. he made mention of the virtues and medicinal qualities of the proverbial road trip, which reminded me of one particular road trip that he and i took a couple of years ago. jim was in the process of fulfilling a dream of his... to open his own coffee house. he tracked down a supplier in new orleans, and had to go down to make the initial purchase of supplies and product, as well as learn how to make the stuff with their equipment.

knowing of my undying love for all things new orleans (i went to seminary there and lived and worked there for 9 years), and having signed on as painter/plumber/electrician/maintenance man for his budding business, he asked me to ride along. i thought i was making like priceline and hooked us up with a room at the providence house, the official size and weight hotel of the new orleans baptist theological seminary. i told the desk clerk that i was a distinguished alumnus, and i wanted the special distinguished alumni rate. i dont remember exactly when it was that i finally told jim we got the same rate everybody gets, but it was still considerably cheaper than anyplace else in town. after we checked in, we hit the quarter and jackson square. we ate muffellatas at cafe maspero's, we walked the quarter, we pointed and laughed as we passed by starbucks, and we even dropped into the ultra-trendy, super-chic canal place and checked out the facilities... only the best for us. i rang up a former youth group member of mine who was now a seminary student herself, and she and a few friends met us at cafe dumond (what, you thought jim whaley was gonna spend a weekend in new orleans and NOT kick it at dumond?)

saturday we were up bright and early and got the tutorial treatment from the folks at new orleans coffee works... they even got me to try some stuff (prior to this, it would have had to be 50 below with a gun to my head for me to put a cup of coffee to these lips). pretty good stuff, it turns out. after jim spent all his money and promised to send them his daugher as final payment, we were back on the road home.

ah, the road trip! my wife, she prefers to fly. its a nice novelty... if you can get a window seat and fly at night. but there's nothing like settling in behind the wheel and tooling down the interstate to one great destination or another. this Christian life is a lot like that. its a journey... the apostle paul describes it as a race, but not a sprint... nor hurtling through the stratosphere in a pressurized aluminum tube, in a giant hurry to get there and get back. its more like a marathon... or a road trip. take in the sights, experience places and faces along the way. leave your mark, make a difference.

jim, thanks for the invite, and for turning me on to great coffee. oh, hang on, let me pull over so the nice officer can get by. well gosh, he must want to say hi... he's stopping right behind us.......

on the road...

as with vcr's, computers, dvd players, dialup internet connections, dsl internet connections and hummus(??), i always said i'd never have need of a blog. well, i was wrong all those times, and i was wrong this time too. i've never thought i was interesting enough, and if i did have something interesting to say, why wouldnt i just email it to whoever i wanted to say it to and be done with it? then all these people i know started blogging about stuff like racism on school campuses, and where the heck are all the youth in our churches going, so i figured, well, you still dont have to have a blog, you can just comment on other peoples' blogs. well, no, you cant. not unless you have a blog. so now i have a blog...

"ridin with the King" has a lot of significance to me...

#1, its a killer song. most folks attribute it to b.b. king and eric clapton, but go back to 1983 and find the original on john hiatt's album of the same name.

b) i love driving, but before i loved driving, i loved riding. oh the places we would go! (apologies to dr. seuss) the drive from jersey city to my aunt's house in teaneck was all of about 30 minutes, but it seemed like we were going cross-country, baby! imagine my sheer ecstacy when we actually piled in the car (me, my dad and my uncle) and drove to MICHIGAN! 16 straight hours of asphalt heaven! so, when the momentous occasion finally arrived (my 17th birthday, the year of every teenager's emancipation in new jersey) and i got my license, it was all over... except for that part about not having my own car. dad was kind of funny that way... HE had to buy his own first car, and the tradition was passed down.

finally, but most significantly, there came a time in my life when i figuratively had to slide on over to the passenger side and let the King take the wheel. i got to driving down some pretty dangerous roads... they were wide and spacious for sure, but they were deadly. so He swung the car around and we got on this narrow little road. and it isnt always a smooth road by any means, but its fun, and its an adventure even better than driving all night to michigan, cause i'm riding with the King.

now then... where'd them racists and disaffected teenagers get off to...........