Random - Movies

A few days ago, I started thinking about the movies we used to watch as kids. I don't remember what triggered these memories in my head, but I started to reminisce. In my childhood, a staple for me and my cousins was to watch those Disney sing-a-long videos, where you'd follow the bouncing Mickey Mouse head to the lyrics, over scenes from Disney movies or the Disney parks (...land, ...world, ...which makes me wonder why there's no Disneyuniverse Park somewhere). And of course, the regular Disney movies, like "The Aristocats", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", and so on.

But what I was really reminiscing about was what I like to think are the top 3 movies of my youth - the ones I'd watch over and over with my cousins, and we'd have our favorite scenes, know the lines, etc. The short list may surprise you.

In no particular order --

1) Sister Act 2.

Not only did we have the movie (VHS y'all), we rocked the (cassette) soundtrack in my aunt's minivan all the time. It wasn't as successful as the original, but it was so much more fun! Now that I think about it, the high school setting of kids who could really sing and the teacher who tried to pull it all together totally reminds me of "Glee". The songs were hella catchy. I mean, "if you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention"... yeah, I can still sing along. And the "Joyful, Joyful" medley that brought St. Francis Academy the state championship always had us singing and dancing along in the living room. Our favorite was the song over the closing credits, where the credits rolled over the cast singing and dancing to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". Man, I wanna watch this movie again. Oh, and it's what introduced me to Lauryn Hill - whose music I still enjoy today. "Some girls/guys are only about that thing, that thing, that thiiiiiiiiing..."

2) Hocus Pocus

Yup, the Halloween movie with a young Thora Birch, Sarah Jessica Parker, and a talking cat named Binx. I never really celebrated Halloween (dang my parents and their overly conservatism), but my cousins and I watched this one alot no matter what season of the year. I don't remember too much of the story now - I know three witches came back from the dead because a virgin lit a special candle, and they needed to absorb the soul of a young girl before sunrise in order to remain alive again. Kinda ridiculous, but it worked. It wasn't scary, it was Disney-ish without being under their umbrella, and it had a fun musical number... that my cousins and I knew the moves. Moving on...

3) Ghost

I know, right? Why are a group of kids under the age of 12 enjoying this movie? Maybe we had a thing for Whoopi Goldberg because of "Sister Act"? Actually, that did have a lot to do with it. She was the comic relief in the movie (and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress that year), and her relationship with Patrick Swayze's character was very endearing. She was the fraud psychic who all of a sudden could communicate with this ghost trying to send a message of warning to his love, and while the movie wasn't a comedy, their interactions provided a deal of humor to the dark yet romantic yet suspenseful film. Our favorite scene that we watched over and over and over was Oda Mae (Whoopi) first starts hearing Sam's (Swayze) voice and she starts freaking out when she realizes she can actually hear a ghost during the fake seance she was conducting. We just found the scene incredibly hilarious ("Sam Wheat???") - what can I say, we were young.

And thus ends my random trip down memory lane. [bows]

Let me see if you can run it, run it...

Girl indeed -- I can run it, run it.

I'm pretty sure certain those lyrics have nothing to do with running a marathon, but every time I get up to run, I tell myself that I can do it.

I haven't blogged about it yet, but I'm currently training for the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon on June 6th. I joined up with Team in Training, which is raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), and we'll be training as a group every weekend until the actual race day, in addition to mid-week scheduled runs that we can do on our own or with others.

This morning marked our 4th weekend run - we hit the one month mark! Exciting. We're building up our mileage and endurance week by week, and there are three levels you can choose from, depending on your experience. I went with the middle group, and on that first week, we ran 4 miles. (Note: whenever I refer to a "run" at this point, I'm more of a run/walk-er. I try to run for most of it though.) Today we did 8 miles... which is longest distance I've ever gone, and it's only going to keep getting higher until we're ready to run 26.2 miles.

It's definitely going to be a mental game moving forward. I'm pretty good at psyching myself out. But then the cheerleader in my head starts beating down the pessimist, chanting "you can do it, keep going"... and it's a good battle, until I'm back at the starting point and I've completed the entire run. It's tiring, but it's a good feeling knowing I made it. It was raining for a little chunk of the run too, which was an inconvenience... but it's like they reminded us in one of the earlier weeks: though we may get tired/sore, it's nothing compared to chemotherapy. And although our hair may get wet/dirty, at least we still have our hair... it's a good reminder of why all of us are doing this. Every week we hear a story from another team member who has a personal connection to leukemia, whether that's they lost a parent, have a close friend with the disease, or their child was recently diagnosed. And to hear a story about kids who currently have it, and yet still have their spirits up and are fighting the disease, it definitely motivates the rest of us. We know we're running for them, and if they can get through all their treatments and not give up, we can get through a couple miles of running.

Team in Training has helped each of us set up a site for donations, and we all have a goal we're trying to raise. If you're interested in making a donation to the LLS, please visit my fundraising page. I'll try to keep both my blog and that page updated with how everything is going.

With that being said (a phrase I've started to pick up from my mentor - heh heh), my legs are killing me, and I worked out my back yesterday as well, so I am taking the day to rest. And then running on the beach tomorrow... good times!

Happy Valentine's Day

I know, right? An odd topic for me to want to blog about, since I'm single and haven't been super motivated to blog about anything in quite awhile... but the following is what spurred me:

Now I've found the greatest love of all is mine

Since You laid down Your life, the greatest sacrifice

It's a song lyric - the pre-chorus (if that's the technical musical term here) to the worship song "Majesty". I'm not sure who the original performer/writer of the song is, but on my computer I have the version by Delirious.

Anyways, I was at church (Flood) tonight for the 6pm service, going by myself as per usual. I was looking forward to it, as I was having a pretty decent day. Woke up in the morning and went on a three-mile run along Mission Beach, had breakfast with two of my fellow runners at The Mission, sent out some emails about the marathon and raising money for the LLS, did my laundry, and had a nice weight lifting session at the gym. And to top it off, The Gate Called Beautiful (Flood's house worship ban) was having their first day back from maternity leave.

So I was actually very pleased with how I was spending my Valentine's Day as a single guy. Yeah, there were the jokes I'd tweet about celebrating "Independence Day" and the usual reference to "Single's Awareness Day", but there wasn't any sadness about being alone. In my mind, it was just another day (and thankfully for me a productive one).

But there I was at church, and it was during the post-message worship session that I felt hit. The band was leading us in the song, and it's one we've sang as a church many times before, and so I was singing it. But when we got to that set of lyrics I quoted up there, and the words resonated in a different way this time, I was just struck with the realization that I wasn't alone after all. That even though I'm not in a relationship or dating someone to share and celebrate all this love stuff with today, I suddenly remembered that I'm loved so deeply and passionately by a God who's faithful and whose grace and love have zero bounds.

Earlier in his message, Matt (our pastor) recounted a time when he was 17 and went to a youth group event at his church because the cute girls were going to be there. But as he was going through the motions of worship, he said he felt God grab a hold of his heart. That it was inexplicable, but that he felt the call to start following Him. And so for me tonight, it was somewhat surreal to have a similar experience -- to be standing there in His presence, feeling loved in the midst of my solitude, tears just coming out of nowhere, trying to hold it back because I felt silly but then just embracing the moment and continuing to sing out the rest of the song with everyone else. But this time, with a different feeling.

Majesty, Majesty

Your grace has found me just as I am

Empty handed but alive in Your hands

Majesty, Majesty

Forever I am changed by Your love

In the beauty of Your majesty

5 Random Things

In lieu of sleep, I present 5 random things that have nothing to do with the 11 week recap I previously mentioned...

1. Do you ever wonder how things would be now if you hadn't broken up with your ex? Every now and then I wonder. It's only just a thought, not a "OMG what did I do?!?!" type of thing... granted, it's been years, but it's curious to think what paths I would've taken had we lasted longer than we did (which was only a few months).

2. Why have I still not seen "E.T." or any of the Indiana Jones movies yet? This would be an easy goal to remedy. I'll make this #12 on my "365" list.

3. I think one weekend I should just drive out to the Grand Canyon. Just because. Never seen it. Think it'd be fun to do so. And it is right there... kinda.

4. I'm really glad that there are some selections of sushi that I can actually enjoy now, since my friends like it. Mmm, crunchy roll! Maybe that's what I feel like for lunch tomorrow...

5. Aaaaaaand per Kristina's request, here's a link to the music video to "One Day", that I previously blogged about.

11 Weeks Later

I think I'm going to be doing a little "Lost" like story-telling with this here blog, as over the next few entries I think I wanna go over some of the happenings over the last 11 weeks... since it's been 11 weeks since my last blog. Quite a long time. I'm a bad busy little blogger, but there has been some awesome things since I last updated that I feel should be discussed/ranted/raved, etc... and much like "Lost", I'll probably be jumping back and forth in the timeline.

WEDNESDAY - NOVEMBER 4, 2009

I see a lot of concerts, but this night was definitely one of my favorites. I went down to the House of Blues to see Boyz II Men! Kinda old school, right? I was only 7 years old when they first came on the scene with that fun song "Motown Philly", so I mean it's not like I was their target demographic in those days. By the time "I'll Make Love to You" was released when I was 10, I was old enough to enjoy the music of it, and yet feel slightly uncomfortable hearing it on the radio with my parents in the car. But songs like "Water Runs Dry", "On Bended Knee", "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday", those were the ones where I knew all the words.

When I heard they were still touring last year, I was pretty surprised, considering they aren't really popular anymore. And they're old - I mean, imagine if NSync were out on tour in 2017. Strange idea, right? But some friends and I were excited to go see them, since they were part of our childhood.

I was initially supposed to go with Kasey, Tiff, and Sarah... and all three couldn't go for different reasons. So I debated not going, until I found out Colleen was going and she could rally three of her friends to go... so I went down with them, and they were all big fans too, so it was awesome. They sang all their hits, and we were singing along, watching them do all the Motown-style dance moves.

At one point during the show, I wondered if they would sing "One Sweet Day", which was their hit collaboration with Mariah Carey. Considering it was really her song and she wasn't there, I quickly brought myself back down to earth. But when the show was finally over and the house lights came on, the house started playing the song over the sound system. And as the audience started to slowly filter out, you could hear people singing along to the very first lyric - "Sorry I never told you..." And then more people started singing it, until soon it felt like everyone was singing along. Our group kept was about to head up the stairs to exit the concert hall, but then we turned back and saw that people were back on the dance floor, slow dancing! So we went back and joined them... definitely a fantastic experience.

"One Day"

Earlier this week, I got an email from the college pastor at my church Flood, as he was looking for volunteers to be part of a music video that they would be filming for an upcoming service. I was intrigued by the idea of being part of it, but didn't think I could fit it in my schedule.

On the day of filming, I saw a message from him seeking a few more volunteers. This time I responded and said that I could make it out. He replied to meet the crew down in Mission Beach, over at Canes, and that I would be playing the role of a boyfriend who is having a fight with his girl. And with just that little bit of info, I made my way down to the beach.

I like being in these quick little video shoots. I did a few with my old roommate Ben, some of which can be found online, but it's been awhile since I've "acted"... today's shoot didn't really require much acting, but it was fun to be out there and part of the process.

The video is set to the song "One Day" by Matisyahu. The concept behind it is that the camera follows this figure from behind, walking down the boardwalk. Filmed in one continuous shot, we come across four "scenes", if you will. Each scene represents an emotion discussed in the song, and I'm in the first one: anger. In our 26 second part of the video, my fake girlfriend is angry and yelling at me, and I'm angry in return, until the figure comes up to us and we realize our fighting is trivial and peace is restored to the relationship. The figure walking down the boardwalk is (if you haven't kinda figured it out) Jesus, and he comes across a few other people representing moments of loneliness and despair.

The above description probably doesn't do the video justice, but I think it will be rad when it plays out on screen. The neat part is that while the video is playing on the speakers, there will be a dance performed on the stage that pairs up with the music and the scenes. If you've ever seen a video/dance at Flood in the past, you'll know how creative and cool these moments can be.

It was funny while we were filming too, because I was paired up with a girl I hadn't met before, who also got recruited at the last minute. As this was a music video and we're not the singers, it didn't matter what we were fighting about, as long as our body language represented anger. While the finished product will be one long flowing shot without cuts, we did need to do a few takes for it to all work out right. So she was yelling at me for funny things, and I was trying not to bust up laughing. A few tidbits:

"I called you 1 and a half minutes ago, and you're just now showing up two minutes later?! How dare you!"

"Why would you not decorate using concentric circles? I hate squares!"

"I told you not to wear blue!"

"You made me lactose intolerant!"

Anyways... the dance and video will be performed/aired at Flood on Sunday the 27th. And I wouldn't be surprised if the video of both are uploaded somewhere, as Flood does have previous videos/dances available for viewing on their Vimeo page. I will post a link when it's available.

Sayonara!

Simple Saturdays

Song of the moment: "Heartbeats", by Jose Gonzalez... very soothing and mellow.

The last two Saturdays have been relatively peaceful, which has been good... Various thoughts have been weighing heavily on my mind during the last two weeks and while I'm able to enjoy some nights out (dinners with some friends or concerts) as good distractions, I think I've needed the one day to keep mostly to myself and rest. Like taking afternoon naps in the quiet of my parent's house. Not that my apartment is bustling on the weekend, but I just need to get away and be still somewhere else. I could've gone to the racetrack tonight with some of the guys and enjoyed yet another concert (a free one, too) but I'm glad I took the quieter route today.

Quick highpoints of the week though: two straight nights of awesome rocking concerts at Viejas Arena (which will be discussed in length in another blog entry) and my first time having Korean BBQ. I went with some coworkers and it was a fun experience. They give you the raw meat and there's a little grill in the center of your table! We also enjoyed some soju and Sapporo, haha... Here's a snapshot of the meal's remnants...

Anyways - tomorrow morning is the StayClassy.org Fire Run. It's a 4 mile run/walk from La Jolla to PB, and I'm running it. Or some mix of jogging and walking. I'm taking the Barney Stinson approach to training though.

Step 1: Start running... and there is no step 2. ;)