The Way I see it: August 2010

31.8.10

30.8.10

I absolutely love this movie and all of its music, but George Clooney's mustache brings me close to disliking it!

:The Irish are the Blacks of Europe, Dubliners are the Blacks of Ireland and Northside Dubliners are the Blacks of Dublin."

- Jimmy in "The Commitments"

All this to say that North Dubliners singing soul makes sense.

27.8.10

I hope I can be as chill as this when I get old.

From a Lifeway research study.

70% of young adults ages 23 to 30 stopped attending church regularly for a least a year between ages 18 and 22 for some of the following:

27%: "I simply wanted a break from church."
26%: "Church members seemed judgmental and hypocritical."
25%: "I moved to college and stopped attending church."
23%: "Work responsibilities prevented me from attending."
22%: "I moved too far away from the church to continue attending."
20%: "I didn't feel connected to the people in my church."
18%: "I disagreed with the church's stance on political or social issues."
17%: "I was only going to church to please others."

Now these numbers neither add up to 70 nor 100, so I'm guessing participants had the option to choose multiple options ...

"Some people also express an increased skepticism about why we even need some of the new technologies the church is using. Does displaying the words to a hymn on a centralized jumbo screen make the process of singing corporately that much easier or more convenient than reaching down to the pew and flipping to the correct page in the book? Sure, there are some benefits involved with trading hymnbooks for PowerPoint (for one, it's cheaper), but do the outweigh the costs (for example the loss of a collected anon of scared church music)? We are very quick to justify the change because of the pros, with scarcely little pause to consider the cons. Because its newness appeals to us, and because we live in a fast-paced, ever-changing world, we embrace the new technology with open arms, even when the old technology (hymnbooks) seemed to work fine for hundreds of years, We show words up on the screen because we can, not because the former alternatives were ineffective."

- Brett McCracken in Hipster Christianity (p.185)

and a little further on

" Now I am not saying that these sorts of things have no merit or do not contribute to the spiritual enrichment of Christians. Certainly the church should be engaging with the creative use of technology. To abandon technology altogether would be just as foolish as leveraging it in an extreme or reckless way. Technology itself doesn't make anything cooler, and increasingly the younger generations are looking for a tech-free space wherein they can quiet themselves and focus on the transcendent truths of the gospel, apart from the media and digital overload of the rest of their lives."

- Brett McCracken in Hipster Christianity (p.186)

Anyone getting sick of me posting text and quotes instead of just videos yet?

26.8.10

The sheer amount of time this must have taken is incredible.

25.8.10

"The consensus seems to be this: we should be deeply Christian artists. But that doesn't mean we should be something called Christian artists or that whatever we produce should be called Christian art. We should simply focus on our craft, on making the best art we can. We should understand that people will and should resonate with out work not because it is Christian but because it is good. Above all, Christians should make good art, true art; art unafraid of exploring mystery, portraying evil, and looking for truth wherever it appears. Which is exactly what the best secular artists are doing."

- Brett McCracken in Hipster Christianity (p.167)

"In his book 'The Culturally Savvy Christian', cultural critic and arts advocate Dick Staub makes the point that discernment should be 'evaluating the nuances of art, not just evaluating it based on a superficial checklist of unacceptable elements.'

Indeed, the point that many artistic Christians are trying to make is that art has so much more to offer us when we engage with it beyond our simplistic moral rubrics. Think about the Bible, they say. It's full of offensive content: sex, beheadings, prostitutes, torture, infidelity, you name it. The Bible is R-rated; it's dangerous. But that's only because life is that way, and every story has to have conflict and resolution, darkness and light.

Something doesn't have to be safe in order to be good. Christian hipsters are desperately trying to communicate this about art. It should not be constricted by a prudish commitment to 'safe,' but rather it should be allowed to do what it is meant to do: unveil reality and expose truth in all of its messy, mysterious glory."

- Brett McCracken in Hipster Christianity (p.165)

Absolutely Gorgeous

Beautiful in so many ways.

It was also made from ~4500still images, which just makes it cooler!

24.8.10

" If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking of everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever."

- Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis (p.167)

I'm not even close to figuring it out, but a shadow is a lot closer than shade.

The Look of Film

HD is the big thing. People love the clarity, sharpness, etc. But I can't stop falling in love with the look of film; the grain, the colours, the sketchiness. Maybe one of these days I'll actually have enough time and money to try my own film. Until then, I'll just appreciate other people's work and work on creating film effects with my own videos.

23.8.10

County Law!

She's kind of adorable.

Jealousy

How sweet would it be to be these kids?!

19.8.10

18.8.10

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars ..."

- Jack Kerouac in On the Road (p.6)

A Video Poem

Yes, this is a video poem. Don't watch it as a video, watch it as a poem.
Talk through each scene in your head and you'll begin to understand.
Astounding.

" ... some of the worst villians of the Nazi regime were not necessarily evil as much as they were terrifyingly normal - simply following directions and doing right by the authorities and nation which had called them to her service."

- Brett McCraken in Hipster Christianity (p.41)

17.8.10

Punk Rock Statements

All through high school I hung out with the punk kids. I never really liked their music, but they were down to earth kids who accepted the immigrant high school me. While I never connected with their music, I fell in love with their visual art style. The rawness and the real life statements that emerged fascinated me. I didn't, and still don't, agree with everything punk rock, but I can appreciate the passion and energy they put into everything they do whether it be music, cd art, posters or videos.

I should also add, that I do actually like this song ... The video is more punk rock than the music. In my book, punk rock is pretty much defined by bands like The Casualties and The Dead Kennedys with which I don't vibe with as much.

16.8.10

Delicious.

13.8.10

I Want to Play

12.8.10

Now That's a Lot of Hipster

Just A Short Post

How can you not love Brett?!

Props to you if you can sit through this whole thing ... Yes, it's that bad ...

11.8.10

Question Mark.

I honestly think they just tried to think of things that don't go together and then put them in the same frame, but, somehow, it works.

How Can You Not Love This Man?

What's your favourite Christopher Walken video?
Post a link in the comments and my favourite one will get a cookie!

10.8.10

Unofficially Official!

I guess they just got a little bored during the filming of the movie "500 Days of Summer" so they filmed this lil' tidbit for the "She and Him" song "Why Do You Let Me?"

An Oddly Fascinating Wedding Video

9.8.10

So Educational

"I like your beard"

Name the song that that lyric is from and I'll buy you a cookie.

The Newest Advancement in Green Warfare

May I present Flower Guns.

A Lil' Late

The way I work this blog is that when I find a video I like, I put it on a list that is about 20videos long. Then each day I put one or two of those links up here. So there is a wait list. This wait list ensures that I always have something to put up here, but it also makes me run the risk of finding a sweet video before everyone else and, by the time I post it, the video has already gone viral. Then I just look like I took it from everyone else ... In some cases I did take the link from someone else, BUT in this case I really did find this link before it appeared all over popular blogs! I promise!

Really, it doesn't matter whether you believe me or not. Just check out this messed up interaction!