ie:missional teaching. glocalizing. living. serving. repenting. incarnating. loving. repeating.

April 18, 2009

A Few thoughts on 24

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Marty Duren @ 7:38 am

I did not start watching 24 with the rest of humanity. It only caught my interest with the movie “Redemption” that aired in the winter and then only because it involved the African child soldier aspect.

Since then, I’ve watched almost all the previous six seasons either online or rental. (A person can really cover some ground on rent-one-get-one free days.)

Here are some observations that have come as a result of watching 6 seasons in a month.

1. Anytime Jack Bauer says, “You’re gonna have to trust me,” your life is about to go very much south.

2. The most used line in the series is, “I know how you must feel.” This line is usually used by people who don’t.

3. With the exception of Jack Bauer, all CTU field agents are terrible shots and typically last four minutes before being killed.

4. The only time that Jack Bauer ever runs out of ammo in a pistol is when he needs to stand up and make a show of ejecting the clip. As long as he is behind a car/crate/cardboard box/greeting card he never runs out of ammo.

5. Jack Bauer is impervious to machine gun fire.

6. Life expectancy for cast members is nil; I hope you have other career plans.

7. Jack Bauer can drive or pilot any type of machinery or craft that mankind has ever invented.

8. Jack Bauer is McGyver with a grimace.

9. He shouts…a lot. He also says, “Thank you,” a lot; usually right after he’s ruined your life.

10. Bauer is always right, even when he’s wrong.

11. The producers believe in resurrection.

12. Killing off Edgar Stiles (Styles) was great drama, but I miss the interaction between he and Chloe.

13. Tony, Tony, Tony, you killed me this week, dude.

April 16, 2009

Hardball Religion, Book Review

Filed under: Books — Tags: , , — Marty Duren @ 2:41 pm

A review of Wade Burleson’s book, Hardball Religion that I co-authored with Ben Cole is now online at ABP News.

April 3, 2009

Amie Street, a cool music site

Filed under: Culture,Life,Music — Tags: , , , — Marty Duren @ 5:40 am

A couple of months ago while trying to find a song on a Harley Davidson ad, I stumbled across Amiestreet.com, an awesome site for downloading indie music as well as a few better known bands. There is some really good music here and many of the downloads are much less than iTunes or Amazon, some as cheap as $.20 with none over $0.98. Each week also features a number of free downloads.

The site has a few outstanding features, not the least of which are most music previews are longer than a minute each-much better than the 30 second clips on iTunes, many of which aren’t even the best parts of the song. Amie Street also has a cool music player that opens on the bottom of the page and plays the samples in order (either whole albums, top 25 or genres) while you check out other pages, artists and reviews. Amie Street, along with most everyone else, has a Facebook page.

Community reviews tend to be a little skimpy, with many of them resorting to “Great song!” type announcements just to bump up a rating history; but if you prefer to be your own judge this is not problematic.

The song I eventually found from the Harley ad is Brother John by Middle Distance Runner. Their Monochrome Boys is also outstanding. A free download today Pulling on a Line by Toronto based Great Lake Swimmers, a really good song. Power chick of the day is Molly Jenson with the rocking The Edgy 8 Ball Song which features, I think, Jon Foreman of Switchfoot on guitar. As with much indie music there are some really creative albums covers and names such as The Low Anthem’s project, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

Purchases are done by putting money on account via credit or debit card and then buying from the account. A recent special gave a 25% bonus so that a $7.50 deposit was given a $10.00 value for purchases. (Am I wrong, or is that really a 33% bonus?) As with any other mp3s, these play in iTunes or other player of your choice.

If you like indie music or are just looking for stuff you haven’t heard before, check out Amie Street.

This is not a Christian music site; language can be an issue periodically.

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