Dad's Children's sermon: Jesus says ...

Happy Easter! When I drove past Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Dallastown on my way to church today, I saw their sign which said, "Easter Never Ends". And that's true. So, Happy Easter!

Sometimes I like to pretend that I'm a cowboy. And when I'm a cowboy, I use the wisdom of Texas Bix Bender. He said, "If you think you're a person of some influence, try to order somebody else's dog around." Did you ever try to order around one of your friend's dogs? The dogs may do what their owner tells them to do, but they won't do what other people tell them to do.

It's like a game you may have played. The leader tells you to do things, but you don't do those things unless he says a certain phrase first. [Simon Says] Let's try this:
Simon says, Raise your right hand
Simon says, Touch your nose
Simon says, Pat your head and rub your belly
Simon says, Stick out your tongue and touch your nose [the trick is that you don't need to touch your nose with your tongue]
Jump up and touch the lights
Good - nobody did that

Sometimes we do that in real life, too - we will do something or not do something only if the right person says it. Suppose you're playing in the mud, and your brother or sister says, "Don't play in the mud." You might think - or even say - "You're not the boss of me." But if your mother says, "Don't play in the mud," you stop playing in the mud.

Why do you do what your mother (or father) tells you? Because your parents take care of you. They love you. They want what's best for you.

And those are the same reasons we do what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus says, Don't steal. Jesus says, Don't tell lies. Jesus says, Honor your father and mother. Jesus says, Love your neighbor. We do all these things because Jesus tells us to, and Jesus loves us, Jesus takes care of us, Jesus wants what's best for us. We may not hear his voice, but we read about what he wants us to do in the Bible.

Let's close with a prayer...
Our Savior Jesus,
We love you and follow your teaching because you first loved us. Amen.

Crayola Blues

My dad writes songs in his free time. When he was younger, he tried to become a professional songwriter. He even had an agent (or something), who said he just had to keep writing more songs, like the ones he had given to the agent. After that, Dad had a loooong writing block. He mentioned in his email today that he was going to do "Crayola Blues" in this week's children's sermon. Here's what I remember of this song, which he wrote about 15 years ago. Maybe I'll post some other of his song lyrics because they're fun.

Crayola Blues
I lost my Crayolas
I wish I had them back.
I lost my reds, my yellows,
my oranges, my black.
The pinks and the purples,
the green ones I did lose.
Now all that I have left
are the blues.

Check This Out!

W&L is admitting it now!

I should probably mention it on my web page too!

Update: Okay, I actually added the link (instead of the blank link), and I also updated my web page. I don't need any more hits to my blog! I got one, maybe two a day.

Calls from the Comcast Call Center

Dad has finished his training and started his job, answering calls and helping people. He reports:

I had a call the other night from a lady who has been trying to order adult entertainment. She's been told that it's not available in her area, but she can order a movie, and then it starts, and then it gets scrambled. It should be working, so I had to send a technician. She tried to order a movie while she was online with me to see if it still wasn't working. I asked her to pick a movie that I hadn't seen. There were some titles which she wouldn't tell me. She said that when she finally gets to see a movie, she will call me with a review.

Those poor, unsuspecting customers who are mad and then get Dad who says something bizarre and possibly creepy if you don't know him.

The Law: My Legacy

Patrick reports

You'll be pleased to know I just had the opportunity to declare, "See this? I take this now." to rowdy grad students, who were throwing around a poster tube, of all things. Your legacy of stern discipline lives on, as does my legacy of rowdy grad students.

Yes, that's one of the reasons that they call me "The Law."

Patrick didn't report it in purple, but I'd like to pretend it is.

Jessie and Christian, featured in a German magazine

Frank scanned in this story about Jessie and Christian. Their story is one of a two-page spread about trusting your instincts. For those of you who don't read German, the title is something like "She said, 'Christian is my absolute dream man,'" which Jessie doesn't remember saying. Dad claims that Jessie's shoes were PhotoShopped in.

Deep Thoughts

People in Michigan use their hand as a map to describe where they live within Michigan. Do Italians use their shoes to do the same? (Kristina is investigating this question as I write.)

Question from the Radio: Who hosted the SNL Weekend Update the Longest?

After I heard a lot of the wrong guesses, I figured out the correct answer. Make your guess before checking the answer.

http://www.saturday-night-live.com/snl/weekendupdate.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_Update

Earl's List

I am a fan of My Name is Earl and all of NBC's Thursday night comedies. Frank found out that Earl's complete list is on Wikipedia. Some people put a lot of work into that list.

Sayings by Mom

Mom used some of her best sayings over the weekend.

An old favorite: You're going to hell in a speedboat. Clearly, a speedboat is faster than a handbasket. I like the imagery that that saying evokes.

A new one: Grandma was belching like a plow horse. I'm guesing that is bad, but I'm not sure that horses--even plow horses--belch.

The Ramones Tribute Concert

Last night I went to a Ramones tribute concert at Mojo 13 in Wilmington, DE. Frank's brother Larry was playing bass guitar in The Havana Affair (that's a band, silly!). It was really good! The waiting for two hours for it to start drove me nuts (even in the small-time, musicians are not punctual), but the actually playing was good.

Larry had the best part. Some background: Larry never has a mike, never sings. He had a mike last night, which made me ask, "Mike, why do you have that ... I mean, Larry, why do you have that mike?" (Yeah, I'm not always smooth.) Larry said into the mike, "It's purely for decoration. But, after the band started, I found out why: Larry had Dee Dee's role of saying "1-2-3-4" in the very brief interlude between songs. It was great! The funny part was that he told us, in practice, the drummer got screwed up because he thought that was the actual tempo. Nope, it's a countoff that has nothing to do with the tempo. (Kind of like Dad's bandmate in Destiny Bill's countoff--I didn't realize one of his influences was the Ramones.)

I thought I knew Ramones songs, but they didn't play any I knew. Originally, the tribute concert was supposed to be 10 bands, so I think no one wanted to play the huge hits because everyone would play them. Since it ended up being only two bands, I didn't get to sing along with "I wanna be sedated", "Rock'n' Roll High School", "Blitzkrieg Bop", and others. The two bands played 14 songs total, so total playing time was maybe 20 minutes. The audience included a wide age range--from early 20s to late 50s. There were two Ramones shirts and one CBGB shirt in the crowd.

While we waited nearly 2 hours for the bands to start playing (at least we arrived before the cover was imposed), I saw someone walk past and I thought, why is that guy wearing a horrible wig? Then, I realized it was Joey Ramone! Mighty Joe Castro (the lead guitarist in the Havana Affair) said, "It's not every day you get to see Joey Ramone." "Joey Ramone" was in the first band, which played the four Ramones songs they knew.

There was a third band last night too. They had an acoustic guitar and a Little Tykes xylophone. It was approaching midnight, so we didn't stick around to hear what they were playing. I can't imagine that they would be playing Ramones songs.

Movie Pyramid

Part of Dad's "work" is to play team-building games, like Movie Pyramid, which is similar to $25,000 Pyramid (or however they're up to now). His team has been doing pretty well--except when there actual prizes.

Recently, his team couldn't get Logan's Run. The clue he was given for Logan was "a boy's name that starts with the letter after K".

Jessie responded:

And you guessed "Lorenzo's Oil"?

I would've gone with a more obvious clue, like "Wolverine's real name on the X-Men" or "Chris Noth's character on Law & Order" or "A boy's name that's also a shade of green".

Dad said that those were good clues but only the L&O one would help him.

Delivering a Message

My advisor Lori is going to give a presentation at Swarthmore next week. I think it would be fun to give her a message to give to Andy. However, in my head, all of the messages get unnecessarily violent. I blame cartoons, Frank's Italian influence, and Lori's easy-going personality and 5'2" stature on the violent images because I don't really have any violent messages to send him.

Battle of the Unliked

I'm watching the NCAA men's basketball championship. I don't want Florida to repeat and I don't want Ohio State to win, so I'm rooting for some official to interrupt that there was major drug and/or academic violations and both teams are disqualified. Frank thinks that's a stretch, but I'll keep rooting for it anyway.

To top it off, the signal from CBS isn't good (or something), and I can't see the score at the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure if it's a high-def problem (my TV isn't) or what. I'm not that good at remembering scores and arithmetic.