Um...Yeah... Totally Unrelated to Kitchen Keeping at All

So, the movie He's Just Not That Into You comes out February 6th in the U.S. Having read excerpts of the book and knowing the general premise (namely that a man who likes a woman goes after her, therefore if he doesn't go after her, he isn't interested in her), I'm predisposed to like it already.

Potential pros of this movie:
good plot premise
awkwardness
Justin Long
Ginnifer Goodwin
seriously, Ben Affleck is in this movie? Where the crap has he been the last five years?

Potential cons of this movie:
cheesiness
over-awkwardness
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore is a terrible actress
She also is awkward
She's also not very bright-seeming
Also Drew Barrymore.

But anyway...

This video definitely increased the probability that I will drop ten bucks to go see HJNTIY. It's about six minutes long, and it's called "10 Chick-Flick Cliches You Won't Find in He's Just Not That Into You."* It stars three of the male leads, who act out the ten chick-flick cliches, complete with soaring violins and green-screen backgrounds. Classic!

*Caution: N particularly SFW as it contains one bleeped but still recognizable off-color remark.

A glimmer of hope on a dim horizon

Flame. LeCrae. Shai Linne.

If those names don't sound familiar to you, they should. They are men who preach the whole Gospel boldly, who aren't afraid to talk serious theology while dropping some serious beats and spitting some serious rhymes. It's crazy stuff, and y'all need to get all over it right now.

While you're waiting for your shiny new Shai Linne album to come in, hop on over to the man's blog and check out what he has to say about serving the Lord with fear and rejoicing.

Go on.

Roundball, Baby.

So, you thought Davidson v. Oklahoma was exciting back in November? Or that nailbiting Tennessee-Gonzaga game last week? Or U of L taking up the bitter fight against UK over the Christmas holidays? Well, you would be wrong.

NOW is when the roundball matchups get really exciting. Take a look at the games today. Louisville-Villanova, for example. That's not just sweat rolling off those youthful foreheads. It's determination, even desperation. Rage. These are the games that matter -- a major loss for either of these teams, currently ranked 21 and 17, respectively, in the second half of the season means being pushed back to the bottom of a hill far too steep to climb between now and the start of March Madness.

The play gets uglier now. Uglier, and bolder, and riskier, and much, much better. Defensive players who watched, stultified, while the offense took three or four shots now light up under their opponents' basket, fighting for rebounds, stealing passes, risking goaltending calls to knock the ball back.

And on offense, even the most prima of prima donnas suddenly realizes that there are four other guys on the court. Passing gets cleaner and more creative. Players cut better, and shot selection improves. Even musclebound, Shaq-esque lugs get their feet moving to get open.

It's the purest form of the purest form of the game of basketball.

If you haven't been watching up to this point... well, what exactly are you waiting for?

And one more thing. Tyler who? Steph Curry is the best basketball player in the NCAA. Don't even try to argue with me.

Ask the Question.

Linked to a really interesting article today by Carl Trueman on what he calls the "shibboleth" of cultural relevance in Evangelicalism. He describes a conversation he had with a student about Mel Gibson's uber-blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ. "We then," he recalls, "entered a discussion about whether it was right to depict Christ visually on the big screen." The upshot? Take a look:

At the end of the discussion, he said that he felt sorry for me because my qualms about the visual depiction of Christ were making me irrelevant to ministry in the modern church. [...] What shocked me in this encounter, however, was not that we had different views on the matter, but that the student could not even see that there was any question to be asked. For him, the question of the meaning, relevance, and application of the second commandment was not even a question. He just thought it was obvious that anything which generated interest in Jesus was a good thing; thus, my concerns about the visual depiction of Christ revealed me as an irrelevant old hack, a superannuated puritan who simply didn't get it. [...T]his student did not even have the categories to see that there was any question to be asked.

Yesterday my eighth graders and I talked about worldview. I admit it's a hard line to walk, to explain the importance of living Christianly while not pushing my students toward total neurosis about the Christianness of each decision. I've quoted Luther on the subject of living an ordinary life that God makes extraordinary, and Trueman references Pascal's similar views on the blessing of relaxation and even entertainment.

I guess I don't really have any concluding thoughts about this -- I just want to emphasize my agreement with Trueman that we must ask these sorts of hard questions about culture, but without allowing ourselves to turn into whack jobs who have a "theology of vacuuming" and the like.

Read the article for yourself. It's a nice little rant, with a lot to ponder.

OK, It's late, but...

Quick rant:

What is up with guys doing covert ops on girls they're interested in? You know what our parents called it when a guy was getting to know a girl he was interested in? They called it DATING. Because they were DATING. Gosh.

Is it really so hard to walk up to a girl and say, "Hey, would you like to have a coffee this Saturday afternoon?" Surely it cannot possibly be as complicated as spending six months scoping her out, trying to get the skinny on her from all her friends via your friends, hemming and hawing around, sending her name out to the prayer committee at your parents' church, confessing to your accountability partner that you think she's hot, casually and vaguely mentioning group outings in her presence... all the while planning to ambush her with a carefully scripted speech. It's like sleight-of-hand dating: Now, look here, nothing in my hand, look closely, and... PRESTO! I pulled a coin from your ear! I mean, WE'RE DATING!

Just. Say. No.