Highlights from my 3 trips to Seattle..
Category: VIDEOS
Today I am starting
Today, Labor Day, September 3rd..I am starting something new.
I am diving deep into something that has been stirring for a real long time.
I was reflecting on the journey with my mom yesterday at the beach. Family has become the number one reason for my own strength and success. Doing things better for them and for a future family of my own. If today can be about more than just Pumpkin Spiced Lattes( although top 5 most important things this is number 5) let it be about gratitude for people in your life. Stay tuned..
Spin
My life be spinning in circles.
Risk is the theme and so is follow through.
Diplomacy is the skill but so is power
Love is the game but so is lust.
Rust is the result, but so is fat
And sorrow, and sad, and endless
Mad!
The sight of these eyes is not satisfied,
It is filled with lie!
So color me new,
Who am I trying to fool?
I am lost in the lust it takes
To call you mine–
One whisper of your name,
Drives me insane!
Shine Along
Nephews, people, family, work, traveling, saying goodbye to my best pal Benji( still friends though) and just getting back into editing because this Mac is BACK!
Shine Along should really end: To Be Continued. There will be more to express and more to digress. We are to fight for light. Fearfully and wonderfully made we are. We are all feeling the confusion with the election time. God holds the answers and we are His ambassadors.
Fantasy Football Podcast
This may seem a little random but why not involve you in my train of thought for my Fantasy Football league. Since fall 2007 I have been in a league with my friends in Kansas City(and now we are all a little more spread out now). And only just last year did I start making a weekly podcast video to make an attempt to understand football but mostly to poke fun at life, football and people in the league. I have made most of these videos private because most people just tuning in don’t track with the inside jokes but because 80 some people follow this blog maybe you would like to see some of them.
This is the most recent.
This is my favorite from last season. The league starter/owner/main man stepped down as commissioner.
Shoreline Awards One Year Anniversary
The timer is off by just a day. The day is really Monday April 29, 2013 and in light of today is much celebration.
A year ago at this time I was receiving honor for a poem I wrote called “It Hurts So Good.” I made a video with my good friend Eric Hanson. Eric helped film me as we drove to Longview Community College( Lees Summit, MO). I will leave the story to the video and the awesome one liners that we crafted along the journey. The poem won first place in the school’s annual writing contest and publication called Shoreline. To this day I still don’t have a copy of the magazine and I am also in search of the gift card I lost that was the prize money. These two bummers do not compare with the first contest for writing I have ever won! Enjoy!
It Hurts So Good( written originally March 2009)
It hurts so good
To get us understood
Why, under the hood
Of this car, parts broken
Are hidden, the quasar
Guitar out of this planet
We want to escape this
Current stipulation,
Your Oregon Trail
Keeps our stomachs
In travail, dropping
Off dead bodies
Decaying the
Smell that kills,
Steals, destroys
Our ploys to get
Well.
It hurts so good
When you text me
How real the pain
Came to be, when in
One hour the victory
Was a high tower,
And remnants of
Tearful fractions
Of time spent
Aspires to dispel
Into thin air,
Like mount Everest
We have given our
Very best to stand
On top of the world,
We have wielded the
Sword, aimed for the
Academy Award for
Best original screenplay
About pain and running away
Like 17 Year old
Girlfriends that
Let the tension
Become the lesion
And tears made
Up the fall, that
After it all, Ender
Would save us all,
The brilliant dance
Would change our
Romance.
Aspiring to be free
I never saw it away
From me, huddled up
In a stoic apartment
Getaway, scribbling
This story as lived
By today, dividing it
As the bible of Ruckus,
What commotion has
Brought it to this?
It hurts so good that
You took your cookies,
Our goodies, your
Priorities out the door,
Your shoes not on
This floor, the upstairs
Boxes, your shoelaces
In remote places,
The laceration spaces
Reserved in need of
Graces aggravated
Against consciousness
It hurts so good when
She broke it off in the
Dead of winter, I was
Aflutter to respond
To her voicemail,
But it ended in jail,
With no money for bail,
I set this ship a sail
Toward a new ocean,
An eccentric commotion,
Stirring inside this affidavit
Written with strike through
Letters effect, to reject is
To collect what could
Never be fathomed,
Turned loose like
A bad phantom
We all want to change
The national anthem to
Be less free, less open
Ended to getting branded
And Wounded.
It hurts so good
When August blew
Past us and porch lit
Sunsets would get
Dim, set on letting
Go, but choking on
Tears that abrasion
Never scarred so
Easily, that sweet
Sweet summer
Would end eventually.
The midnight affray,
The vision of a new day
The empty white box
Counting the loss, a
A simple toss into
The river, taping over
The sliver in time dedicated
To her.
It hurts so good to know
That every contusion that
Keeps us up all night, will
Only shine bright and bring
More light to discoloration.
That sometimes confusion
Is the best place to start
The conversation.
Houses can be rebuilt to
Feel more like home
And on that Day when
He meets the groan, it
Will be made known that
I didn’t shy away, coy
In dismay, hid like a boy,
But rather I stood a
Better man, that my striving
Was not in vain, that from
Day one it was made plain
That death to all this pain,
Would make my soul sing,
And crossing over into
The heavenly ring, would
Cover multitudes of
Seemingly contorted
Pain.
It hurts so good to know
That every inch of God
Consciousness will make
Up for all this nonsense,
That golden roads and the
Endless placid river, we
Will see the giver—of life,
Of joy, of endless banqueting
Delights and He will stand
With all might and the bearer
Of our blind sight, The Man,
The Mission, The scar, here’s
My life so far, I embrace the pain.
Movie Reviews: The Best Of 2011
May I say, years ago, in my reading of Story I was prompted to check out every single movie he mentioned. Not exactly every kind but as many as were in caplocks as possible. This is my compiled list of my subjective favorites. This is not an extensive list of all the movies of the year, that would take way too long. These are my recommendations for you.
1. The Next Three Days( Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks, Lennie James)
From Academy Award winning Paul Haggis comes a very different, desperate side of Russell Crowe. What I like about this film is the nuance in Russell’s exterior. He plays a different guy that is more human and more vulnerable then he has been in the past. We are used to seeing Him dominate in Gladiator or in L.A. Confidental. I am used to seeing him as a tough renegade. He is rather normal and desperate in The Insider But here 10 years later he plays an average teacher who becomes bent on Don Quixote’s rational reasoning of what is a man’s reality. It is a reality that you create. So his sense of justice and plea to rescue his wife who is framed for murder. It sure comes out in a way that I enjoyed very much so.
2. The Switch (Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, Michael Robinson, Patrick Wilson And that Jeff Goldblum guy)
Just a fun, sincere comedy from Alan Loeb(my new favorite screenwriter). Jason Bateman in his 17 movie credits since 2006 resurrects himself with the neurotic wally in this movie and Jennifer Anniston is all but wildly adorable. What I most appreciate is the candidness in these characters and the all but to human George Castanza paranoria that Jason adapts to, very well in fact. This movie made me laugh and cry in one setting, a must see.
3. Thor: God Of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins)
It has its moments of chease, like all the Avengers have brought to the screen but the spiritual metaphors and imagery in this film made me appreciate it all the more. Can’t say much more, just enjoy this one. And the gatekeeper, he’s the best.
4. Tree Of Life
I guess technically this was the end of 2010 that I saw this I will have to say that this artsy representation of the decay of man’s existence gave me a wind of life and a wind of inspiration. Its not so much the acting but the imagery and the scene arrangement that I really appreciated the most.
5. The Descendents
George Clooney plays the beached male that confronts loss in a way that I have not seen in a while. We are so used to the single womanizer of Up In The Air Or Out Of Sight but its easy to forget those past cliches when you watch this film. Everyone has to confront death and there current reality mixed with your lack. Your kids can not become what you have imagined and no book is read to tell you how to deal with your wife dying or your kids not liking you but facing it, that is hard and that is real.I give this two big thumbs up, a must see. Just be aware of some volatile language.
I guess I am stopping at the top 5, but more of these to come. And Green Lantern was the worst movie of the year, just for the record.
1985
This is a poem that happened in real time and space and the video on the bottom is me performing the rap to an audience that had never heard this life changing rap before. It was during the fire in the night internship.
Blowing hot air
Into my hands
Creating friction
Never knew it
Would turn out
To be non fiction
What I rhymed
And rapped that night
We almost froze
In that circle but
Laughed ourselves
Warm, with no
Warning of right
Or wrong, I just
Made up my own
Song, It was 2004,
Who could have
Asked us for more other
Than our attempt to be
Against the norm,
I started with the year
I was born, the circle
Grew colder and my age
Changed older as I riddled
Out my place of birth,
It was like journeying
To the center of the earth
With these rhythms and rhymes
Close brothers laughing at
What could only be created
In that moment, and on a dime,
I gave the place and the time—
Of Jared’s birth
Feel it shake the earth,
This rap will last forever
He was born a boy
You can’t toy
With these riddles
You can’t stay up
Late and recreate
These memories
They just happen
And as time passes
We listen, we hear
The rap again and again
And the circle stays
Together, and we look
Back at that cold weather night.
Where the words weren’t trite
and Jared sang with all his might.
My Show, Episode #7: Night Time Outreach
They just keep coming. I am challenging myself to learn something new every time I make a new show. As far as editing goes, I have kept things pretty simple, and that’s what I want to keep doing but as an editor I want to stretch myself each time I make a new show. This is my first episode learning something new with titles in After Effects. Filmed last Friday night, this episode is tuned to the LOST soundtrack and is footage of an evangelism outreach in downtown Kansas City. Enjoy!
Guest Stars: Nate Wood, Carly Moore, Hal Lindhart, Jesse Engle, Josh Thompson, My new roommate Christian Early, This girl named Loretta, and a bunch of teens from Kansas City. Enjoy!
Student Ministries Podcast
Since Zack has been honeymooning I have been working on getting a pod cast going for Student Ministries. As I blogged over the summer about spending hours staring at the computer screen making promo videos for the teens at our Awakening Teen Camp, I am back at it again. Here’s the trailer. It took me a good three to four hours to learn how to make the flying title in the intro and outro. I am determined to know everything I can about the program After Effects. I feel that if I learn this program then I will be able to do way more with videos. The opening clip of Dave preaching is so amazing that I have probably watched it at least 50 times this week(okay, maybe less, but a lot). Enjoy!
THE RUCKUS JOURNAL 