MB | Mockingbird

Posts tagged "MB"

Coming Attractions

by Stampdawg on Dec 29, 2010 • No Comments

Here are seven movies being released on DVD in Jan/Feb (most of them on Jan 11 or 18). I haven’t seen them yet — but they all feel like home runs.

Get Low. “A deft blend of dark humor and poignancy” and a huge standout from a MB perspective. Read this great Christianity Today interview with Robert Duvall about it.

The Social Network. Making either #1 or #2 in many of critics’ Top Ten lists around the country. Our DZ and the NYT comment here.

The Town. Great action/thriller. Also making many critics’ top ten lists.

The Other Guys and Cyrus. Two…

No Laughing Allowed

by Stampdawg on Dec 15, 2010 • 5 Comments

OK, to be honest, I am a movie/TV nerd, and everything I know about football comes from watching Friday Night Lights. If you actually threw a football at me I’d be more likely to duck than catch it.

But I ran into this story over the weekend and would really love to hear what you folks at MB think about it. I walked away feeling so much for this guy, who is quarterback Derek Anderson for the Arizona Cardinals.

This is what happened, as far as I can tell. The Cardinals were getting hammered, it was the fourth quarter, they were down…

Humor / Relationships / Religion / Science

The Kayak and the Spaceship

by Stampdawg on Nov 16, 2010 • No Comments

“…how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb?”

The cover story of the December Atlantic is the most fascinating essay I have read in a while — along with being funny, touching and just a delight in terms of sheer prose style. It touches on so many things that are of interest here at MB, including fathers and sons, the need of secular man for some kind of religion, the virtually unlimited capacity of man for self-deception, spaceships, and much more.Here are a few excerpts:

Many of Dyson’s facts on global warming are wrong, as the scientists who…

Law / News

The FBI and the Encyclopedians

by Stampdawg on Aug 10, 2010 • 2 Comments

Mike Godwin, author of Godwin’s Law, is a favorite at MB; and his name has been invoked on more than one thread here at this blog. Who knew that he ended up as chief counsel for Wikipedia?! I certainly didn’t, and was delighted to discover his name at the bottom of Wikipedia’s sardonic rejoinder to the FBI — Godwin’s letter is the funniest piece of legal writing I have ever run across.

Apparently it all started with the FBI demanding that Wikipedia remove its seal as an illustration to the WP entry on the FBI. Read all about it here. You’ll…

Humor / News / Religion / Theology

Joel Osteen: Crazier Than We First Thought?

by Bryan J. on Jul 29, 2010 • 13 Comments

Proofs that can be derived from this video:

1) We always thought Joel Osteen interpreted the Bible wrong. Now we can rightly assume that he has simply never read it before (especially the New Testament).

2) If Joel Osteen is going to live under the law, at least he has the moxy to live under all of it, including the dietary laws.

3) If I could attain righteousness by switching to Turkey Bacon, I’m still not sure I could attain it.

4) Joel Osteen has moved up on all our lists from nuisance to Judaizer- an old Christian legalist heresy that said Gentiles…

Interviews / News / TV

An Interview with the Writers of LOST

by Todd Brewer on May 17, 2010 • 2 Comments

A few MB-related highlights from a recent New York Times interview with LOST writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. If you are interested in the show at all, the interview is worth the full read.

On their literary influences:“One of the things that we completely own is that in many ways “Lost” is a mash-up/remix of our favorite stories, whether that’s Bible stories from Sunday school or “Narnia” or “Star Wars” or the writings of John Steinbeck. Carlton and I both had to take philosophy classes when we were in college, and we talk about philosophy, so when certain ideas…

News / Prayer

Pray for our friends in Pensacola

by Stampdawg on May 3, 2010 • 1 Comment

Everyone has been watching in horror in the last few days as the expanding oil slick threatens the Gulf coast. But few people are feeling it as keenly, we feel sure, as our Mockingbird brothers and sisters in Pensacola, city of sugar-white beaches.

Their wildlife, their beautiful beaches, and their economy are at great risk.
Please keep our many MB friends there in your prayers, especially the lovely parish of Christ Church who so graciously hosted us last January in our first ever mini-conference, as well as the family of beloved MB contributor Jeff Hual.

A recent update:Famous White Pensacola Sand…

Grace in Practice / News

Morning Edition and the Gospel

by Kris on Mar 9, 2010 • No Comments

Here is a story that was aired on NPR’s Morning Edition about two years ago. If you want to read the whole segment you can find it here.

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn. He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
“He…

Children / Literature / Poetry / Reviews / Theology

Oscar Wilde… also bringing you the Gospel

by Stampdawg on Feb 2, 2010 • 9 Comments

Mockingbird talks a lot about movies and music. Much of the time though we can’t do the thing we really want to do — which is give you the whole song or movie. You know: click here and watch the whole thing now!

But… there’s a whole lot of fiction, especially short stories, that are in the Public Domain. Which is to say: pure Gift, no cost, no earn, just click and receive. Which is of course totally what we are about.

So here’s my stab today at throwing out some very MB fiction. Hopefully we can do more of this. The…

Film / Year In Review

The Year That Was (1999)

by Stampdawg on Jan 11, 2010 • 3 Comments

A couple weeks ago, Dave Zahl asked me to produce a list of my own favorite films of the last decade. And in trying to come up with it I kept having the following frustrating experience. I’d think “Well, I gotta include movie _________. I mean that was amazing! Wasn’t that done in 2000 or 2001?”

And I’d look it up, and I was wrong. It was ALMOST in this decade. But it was actually made in 1999.

Which made me realize how very differently this decade ended vs. the last. 1999 was just a…

Humor / Law

Running from the Law

by LGF on Jul 31, 2009 • 2 Comments

When I was seven years old and my mother would make me go to church, about the most I ever tried was to fake being sick. However, this kid in Utah took things to a whole new level….

Everyday / Humor / Law

This photo was taken at an institution for children with super extremely sensitive ear drums

by Stampdawg on May 17, 2009 • No Comments

Hat tip to our beloved Jeff Dean.

Grace in Practice / Law / Music

The Redemption of Sammy Hagar

by Aaron M. G. Zimmerman on Apr 14, 2009 • 8 Comments

I love Van Halen. And like all intelligent people in the universe, I think David Lee Roth, their original (and again) singer is the real deal, while Sammy Hagar was, at best, an approximation. However…

Hagar and Van Halen recorded a song (from the 1986 album 5150) called “Love Walks In” that is pure Gospel, water in a land that is waste. Here’s a video of a live performance:

Why is this song so awesome? Check out the chorus:

…and then you sense a change,
nothin’ feels the same,
all your dreams are strange–
love comes walkin’ in.
some kind of alien
waits for the opening,
simply pulls a…

Music

"A Good Song for Easter"

by Lauren R.E. Larkin on Apr 9, 2009 • 3 Comments

There are just some days when things just seem or are pretty bad. And then, almost out of the blue, someone–your husband–says, “Hey, you should listen to this Bill Mallonee song”–almost out of the blue…you are married to a Bill Mallonee Uber Fan. And you think, “I guess, I mean he says this all the time.” So, you do listen. And you hear the beautiful message of Easter and you know that you are not alone, that this isn’t permanent, and that you are forgiven and that there is hope that you can forgive and be forgiven by others. You…

Everyday / Literature