Archives for category: just grinning

Joy And Pain

September 17, 2007 //

I went downtown toward the end of last week to pick up tickets for our family to catch the Architecture in Helsinki show at the House of Blues in November. Our four year old daughter is a big fan — lately, she has been specifically requesting their new single, Heart It Races, during our car rides. Needless to say, we’re really looking forward to this show — especially after seeing their joyous Take Away Show performance below:

While I was at the box office, I realized that it would only be a quick jaunt to Horton Plaza to pick up a beloved fried — not baked — apple pie at the McDonald’s there. I was practically skipping as I made my way up the escalators in anticipation. But instead of being rewarded with this rare delicacy, I was greeted rudely by this sign:

I briefly considered taking their advice and visiting the food court for other dining options, but I knew that despite their wide international variety, any other dessert product would be a cheap substitute. Guess it’s back to the old fried apple pie locator for now.

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As long as I’m on this Take Away Show kick, check out these clips of Francois Virot. I hadn’t heard his work before this, but I must say the intimacy and immediacy of his performance has made a fan out of me.

Categories boo!, family, hooray!, indie, just grinning, music

Burning Down The House

September 5, 2007 //

These are dark days for fans of Michigan sports. It is bad enough that the Tiges have been tanking it lately — did they really have the best record in baseball at some point during this season? Or is that just my mind creating a defense mechanism against all of my dashed hopes?

But the true pain emanates from the ashes of what was once known as “The Big House,” the home of University of Michigan football. Last Saturday, the Wolverines — who were supposed to contend for a national title — suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of I-AA team Appalachian State. The winningest team in college football history suffered a loss like no other. Usually the Maize & Blue wait until the end of the season to crush my gridiron dreams, but I guess they decided to get an early start this year.

I think I’ll stick with Wii Sports this season. ~~Any tips on how to get all ten homeruns in the homerun derby?~~ ~~I’m stuck at nine.~~ I finally hit ten homeruns out of ten pitches. But now the Wolverines have been utterly crushed by a bunch of Ducks.

Categories boo!, just grinning

Strong Enough For A Robot, But Made For A Human

August 23, 2007 //

I had the chance to meet up with DJ Chuang yesterday. It is fun to see social networking actually build community and friendships. It was great to get to know him more and pick his brain about a number of topics. We had a nice laugh over the way bloggers might be more likely to recognize one another by their site names than by their actual names. It makes me glad that I didn’t name my site “big nerd” or “xX1004QTaZnKimchigAngstaXx” (those of you in Asian American youth ministry know what I’m talking about).

After meeting with DJ in OC, we ventured out to LA — where we met a friend at the Giant Robot store. GR is probably best known for their magazine, which has covered Asian American pop culture since 1994. Being a fan of the magazine, I was excited to visit their Los Angeles store.

Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, but when I first entered the store I was a little bit disappointed. To me, it was a little bit too small and a little bit too crowded. We bought our daughter a little Doremon keychain and went to meet our friend at the Giant Robot restaurant, gr/eats. (which, as Jonathan Gold has written, is a great place to eat with little ones).

Being a t-shirt junkie, I went back to the GR store after dinner and — after much deliberation with my daughter — picked up this shirt (and, no, that’s not me in the photograph). It was strange, but returning for a second visit left a very different impression on me. Maybe it was the tasty french fries I had just eaten at gr/eats (shoestring potatoes, yams and bananas) but the second time, in this case, was the charm. Actually, I think it was because the store was pretty empty and I was able to interact with the people working there — we talked about different magazines, music, and they helped my daughter find just the right Uglydoll (which she has since renamed “Sleeping Beauty”).

Community is such a funny thing. We find it in the most unlikely places — even the quickly disappearing indie record store. Whether it is connecting over common interests and life pursuits, sharing a nice meal together or helping someone sift through an entirely too large pile of Uglydolls, we are made to connect with one another.

Categories art, asian american, church, community, design, hooray!, indie, just grinning, reviews, youth ministry

Is it just Mii?

August 14, 2007 //

After months of pestering my beleaguered wife, our family finally purchased a Wii. Because of its unique playing system, this is a platform we can play with our four-year old daughter — and, boy, does she love it! Actually, her favorite part isn’t really even a game — it is creating virtual Mii characters. In addition to her personal Mii, she has created several others Miis named “Sleeping Beauty” and “Lumberwell.” We’re still scratching our heads over that one. If I ever figure out how to upload the images, I’ll show some of the funny Miis she has created. We’re also still trying to figure out how to get our Miis to look more like us. Maybe I should talk to Kye.

Our daughter has always named her dolls in a very creative manner. It took us weeks to figure out why she kept calling one her dolls “Ray-fa-fa.” Finally, it dawned on us that she had taken this name from her favorite movie, The Sound of Music — specifically, the scene where the Von Trapp children are learning to sing, “Do Re Mi” and they hit the funky breakdown: “Do mi mi, mi so so, re fa fa, la ti ti…”

I’m glad to report that we have managed to avoid any horrific Wii-injuries so far, but I must say playing the Wii is surprisingly demanding. While it probably says more about my physical conditioning than the difficulty of Wii gaming, I’m pretty worn out after a couple of rounds of boxing or after a homerun derby.

So far, our favorites are Cooking Mama (pictured above) and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Cooking Mama is exactly what it sounds like — a game of cooking up different kinds of foods. I was kind of skeptical at first but this game is seriously addictive fun. And, again, surprisingly demanding. Try racing the clock to stir up the batter or chop up some fatty bacon (in actual physical motions with your Wii-mote) and you’ll be sweating up a storm in no time.

Twilight Princess is an incredible — not to mention time-consuming — game. I really enjoyed Wind Waker (despite some negative reviews) and this takes the franchise in a new direction. Strangely, a lot of people end up here after searching for some variant of “Zelda” and “Wind Waker.” Ah, nerdom. Another birthday gift from my wife was this shirt, which pretty much sums it all up.

Categories family, hooray!, just grinning, reviews

The Harvest Is Plentiful (And Loud)

August 6, 2007 //

I took my students to the Harvest Crusade up in Anaheim yesterday. Just a couple of quick thoughts:

Welcome to the Big Rock Show. I think I tend to be a lot more cynical than my students about this kind of stuff. Maybe it’s just from longer exposure to the strange world of the Christian subculture — or maybe it’s just my cold, dark heart — but I am often reluctant to go to these kinds of events. Plus, I’m getting all old and driving up two hours from SD to Anaheim really puts the hurt on me. That being said, Greg Laurie shared a great message and reached the hearts of many of our students. Although my heart is moving more & more towards the simple living of life together as God’s people, there is still a place for blowout events.

Live music is the best. Some of my students, to my surprise, were pretty stoked to see P.O.D. perform. It’s been a couple of years since they stormed the charts, but the boys from Southtown still put on an energetic, and sincere, show. My four-year old daughter really liked them. However, we were all blown away by the opening act, Leeland. Man, that kid has some pipes! Most of my students had not heard of him before Harvest, so I picked up their CD and we listened to it on the way up. For me, the album has that over-produced, CCM-ified feel to it, though I did appreciate the thoughtful lyrics right off the bat. But everything changed when we saw them perform live — the band is tight, the rhythm section really came to life in the live setting and Leeland really opened up and let loose with the vocals. They managed to segue “How Great Thou Art” and “Agnus Dei” together without being corny. In fact, they ripped it up during the instrumental breakdown of Agnus Dei. I still want to give him a haircut, though.

The freaks come out at night. Seriously. Check out this guy. Remember what I was saying about nasty street preacher signs? I’m pretty sure this one will be hard to top. (Apologies for the poor quality — I snapped it from my phone while trooping around the parking lot looking for our van).

I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean “Jesus kills” as in — “Dude, Jesus totally killed it on that last song when He jumped off the Marshall stacks and levitated over the crowd.” The other signs read: “Laurie leads to hell” which I can only assume was knock on Greg Laurie — although without more specific direction, it could just be a jilted lover railing against his ex-girlfriend. Maybe it was one of those newfangled emo bands that keeps sprouting up. Who knows? You can see if you have better luck creating your very own emo band name with an emo band name generator. For real, though, if you name your band “Laurie Leads To Hell” and you make it big, I want a cut of the proceeds.

Categories church, controversy, evangelism, just grinning, preaching, reviews, youth ministry