News of Late Summer

     I'm a college student, so time is usually measured in semesters. And since fall comes before spring on an academic calendar, camp is kind of the "New Year" reckoning place. Part of the charm is being free from electronics; but some pop-cultural stuff can be missed(which doesn't matter, spiritual things are more important), but it's interesting.

     In the category of "Celebrity News", Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton announced that they're getting divorced; which is incredibly sad and disappointing. I'm not sure why, it's not like I actually know them, but it seemed like things were good.
     Other musical news, Jon's band Heroes At Large just released their second single, it's called "Remedies". Give it a listen!

     In more local(Tulsa) news, GBC and Mingo Valley Bible Fellowship are considering merging. Greg Rusco just announced it on Sunday, and once it had been carefully explained, the immediate reaction was cautiously in favor and optimistic. My guess is that it'll be a done deal by January.
     It's been a weird year for our church. The past couple years have been, really. We've been losing members left and right, mostly for good reasons(moving due to job; getting married, dying, etc). They have, too, from what I've heard. The two youth groups held a combined get-together event last night, which sounded like it went really well.
     I think Bennett, Laura, Courtney and some other people are planning on going to the Roughnecks game tomorrow night; that should be fun.

     Not really sure where this goes, but a while back I watched the 1969 Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which I really liked. It was written by William Goldman; so that helps a lot, but also, Old West outlaws are especially interesting historical figures. Besides - and this is what Goldman liked so much about them - outlaws just don't run away in movies. Which is exactly what the real-life Cassidy and Sundance did; they were a minor outlaw team who ran to South America with Sundance's girlfriend and became the James Brothers of Bolivia. Also, there was great dialogue all throughout, and some extremely well-written scenes.
     2000's M. Night Shyamalan-directed Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, I watched yesterday morning. It was really good; used strange camera techniques and angles, but it worked very well. Basically, it's about a security guard who survives a train wreck. Robin Wright plays Willis' wife. Jackson plays a comic-book art historian.
     Then last night I rewatched Megamind, the 2010 superhero parody starring Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Brad Pitt. J.K. Simmons has a minor role as the Warden. (2010 was a great year for animated movies. There was Toy Story 3, of course; but then for quotable purposes you also had Monsters Vs. Aliens, Despicable Me, and How To Train Your Dragon.) It's almost a parody of parodies; which flips it back into real-movie status. Kind of hard to describe, but it has some of the best transitions between scenes and sequences that I've ever seen. (I know, you're not supposed to notice things like transitions, but....I do, so....yeah.) Lots of snarky dialogue throughout, too, which is great.

     Read through Catherine Marshall's novel Christy; which is based on her mother's adventures as a schoolteacher in the Appalachians of East Tennessee in 1912. I think she must have read a lot of Lucy Maud Montgomery and Harold Bell Wright(The Shepherd of the Hills), based on her writing style. I liked it, though I didn't care much for the ending. But then, I tend to like books set around mountains; whether it's in western North Carolina like Jan Karon's Mitford books, the southwest Missouri Ozarks of Shepherd of the Hills, the northeast Oklahoma Ozarks of Wilson Rawls's Where the Red Fern Grows or Summer of the Monkeys, or the north Georgia section of Appalachians of Maud Lindsay's Posey and the Peddler. Also, Brad Paisley grew up in West Virginia, and I love his writing.
     This doesn't always apply, though; for example, even though Katniss and Peeta are from somewhere around West Virginia, I'm really not much a fan of The Hunger Games books. (The best is Mockingjay; because of its emphasis on the role of the media in war.) I just don't much care for YA fiction in general, though every once in a while I find something that's okay. (The Book Thief, by Markus Zuzak, for example.)
     Also read through Agatha Christie's N or M?, a WWII Tommy and Tuppence adventure. It's great. And The Essential Calvin and Hobbes and The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, collections by Bill Watterson. Also great. Calvin's imagination....Hobbes' voice of sanity....those expressions of surprise...it's terrific.