Chris Cornell -- songwriter, rock star... mancrush?

Even at the urging of some of my friends, I still haven't seen a single episode of the hit show "American Idol". I'll get to it someday, I promise! But this year I did start to pay more attention to what was going on with the show because a rock singer (David Cook) kept avoiding elimination week after week. Pretty impressive for a show that has mostly rewarded pop singers(and one country star, Carrie Underwood).

David Cook ended up winning the competition. Cool! Many people's favorite performance of his is a recomposed version of "Billie Jean". Yes, the Michael Jackson song.

A few years ago Chris Cornell rearranged the song and turned it into a haunting acoustic piece. He has always been my absolute favorite rock vocalist, just above Dave Grohl and Wes Scantlin. His range, both in notes and in style, has always impressed me. Yet many people in America had no idea who Chris Cornell was until American Idol mentioned his name. Here's David Cook's performance. It's excellent:



So for those of you who still may not really know Chris Cornell, I'll give you a few more details. First, he was lead singer for two rock bands -- Soundgarden and Audioslave. He's been in a couple of movies too, I think. Not important.

If you really want to know Chris Cornell, and to be struck full-force with the strength of his studliness, look no farther than Garth Brooks.

You know Garth Brooks, right? Country superstar? A guy so rich that he reportedly gave his wife over $125 million as a divorce settlement? A guy who has gone to spring training for four different Major League Baseball teams, just for fun? Because when you're that rich and famous, you can pretty much do whatever the heck you want and nobody will argue.

So what present do you get for somebody like that, on Christmas or their birthday? What could a man like that possibly want?

He wanted to be Chris Cornell. In 1999 Garth Brooks apparently became bored with wealth and fame and wanted to do something totally different. He created an alter-ego rock singer called, you guessed, it Chris. Chris Gaines. One of the pictures below is his album cover. The other picture is Chris Cornell.



Creepy.

I'd rank it as the single biggest public mancrush of all time. Bigger than John Madden on Brett Favre. Bigger than Jimmy Kimmel on Ben Affleck.

Yet with all that fame and power, Garth Brooks couldn't get his biggest wish. He couldn't become Chris Cornell. His album flopped horribly and there was even supposed to be a Chris Gaines movie, but fortunately it got scrapped and the apocalypse was thereby delayed.

Moral of the story: reinventing yourself can be fun and all, but only if it moves you closer to who you really are.

Family update part 2 -- stories

Time to continue the family update, this time with anecdotes from the past few weeks:

You know what I mean

It had been a long day, and Jamie and I were trying to get the kids ready for bed. I had already told Samantha twice that she needed to clean her room and put pajamas on before playing. I then left her room to go help out with Jack.

Two minutes later I checked on Samantha. Her room was still a mess, and she was totally naked, dancing in front of the mirror. I tried my best to stifle my laughter as I took her to Jamie. You see, it was Jamie's night to put Samantha to bed, so I was going to let it be her call on the consequence for Samantha's behavior.

Samantha walked over, still naked, to her mommy.

"Tell her what happened, Samantha", I said.

"I didn't clean my room."

"And what does your room look like right now?", I asked.

"It's a big desire."

Blank stares all around.

"Do you mean disaster?", I asked.

"Yes."

Stifling didn't work anymore.

Red-faced

I had both kids with me at Home Depot, one of their favorite places. I turned my back on them for a second to pick out the light bulbs I was looking for. When I turned back to face them, Jack was climbing up a weedeater. Yes, a weedeater. My instincts took over and I yelled out, "JACK! OFF!"

Except I said those words really close together. It didn't really sound like two words. Everybody turned to look at the filthy-mouthed redhead.

Hotel Adventures

Last weekend we drove to Arkansas to attend my grandad's 80th birthday party. That meant three nights in a hotel with our kids, which is usually pretty fun. We call it "hotel adventure" time. On this trip, though, we didn't even make it past 2am on the first night before changing the sleeping arrangments. The kids had to be separated so I shared a bed with Samantha and Jamie slept with Jack. Jamie got the good end of that one, I tell you.

Samantha did the following over the next two nights:

Full-body twitches
Snorts
Going deep under the covers and then sitting up (?).
Headbutting me repeatedly -- sometimes in single, large bashes, and sometimes with a series of light taps
Clapping

More on the clapping. One night at about 5am she sat upright in bed, raised her arms to her sides and brought them together in one loud clap. Then she laid back down.

One hour later the same thing happened. Upright, big clap, lay down. She laid on her side facing me so I said, "Samantha, stop clapping." "Okay", she responded.

Then, while still looking me in the eye, she proceeded to lift her arms up from under the covers and clap loudly. Twice. Clap! Clap!

She was obviously still asleep and had no idea what she was doing, and she had no memory of this when she woke up the next day.

My uncle had the best tip of the weekend -- future hotel adventures should include a two-room suite with a connecting door. Samantha can get her nighttime freakshow on all by herself.

Not really funny

It's interesting that out of the 20 kids in Samantha's gymnastics class, I'm the only dad who is ever there to watch (it ends at 5:30).

It was interesting that out of the 10 kids who graduated yesterday from pre-kindergarten at Samantha's school, I was one of only four dads to attend.

Actually that's not interesting, it's just sad...

Family update part 1 -- pictures

I was out of town for a week on a golf trip with guys from work. My life is tough, I tell ya.

I'm back now so here's a slew of pictures from some of our family fun over the past several weeks:

--Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
--Our first ever camping trip
--Miscellaneous cuteness and craziness

Also, my friend Hal followed our friend Debby's lead and put a music playlist on his blog, so I've now done the same. If you scroll alllllll the way down to the bottom of this page, you'll see my playlist and can listen to it. I haven't set it to "autoplay" for every visitor; that way people won't be surprised to come to my blog and wonder where the music is coming from! I've enjoyed listening to other people's selections and having it run in the background while I'm working.

In a couple of days I'll continue the family update with some stories. Later!

Are you religious?

Here's a weird story to start things off. Hal Johnson has a blog and makes comments here regularly. He's a guy I only know online, so our friendship is 100% virtual, in a sense. Yet I've been able to meet some of my internet friends in real life and it's always a seamless transition, so at the same time I realize that my friendship with Hal is 100% real, even if we've never shaken hands or eaten a meal together.

Anyway, on Hal's site is a section called "Frequent Landing Sites", a set of links to other blogs he enjoys. He was kind enough to add mine to his list and for a long time it read "Megaloi -- a religious Houston dad with an open mind." At some point he changed the word "religious" to "spiritual". Now his blogroll continues to grow so he's run out of room for descriptions altogether.

I was thinking about the change from "religious" to "spiritual" the other day (Hal and I never talked about it) and clicked on another link in his list. It took me to a lady's blog, and her post that day was about the difference between religion and spirituality. Whoa. Gave me the booboojeebies. So I figured I should write about it.

The word "religion" doesn't show up much in most English translations of the bible. One of its appearances is in the book of Acts, when Paul is in Athens trying to introduce the tenets of Christianity to a population who embraced the philosophy of Plato and created idols to many diverse gods. He stood up in the midst of a council and said, "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious!" (Acts 17:22).

He goes on to give a very sophisticated, eloquent speech to a group of highly intellectual people. Underneath it all is the gentle reproach that while these people were great thinkers, they'd missed the true path of spiritual fulfillment. A man named Jesus had shown the way but this group of philosophers were too busy debating existentialism to notice. It's a pretty cool speech.

The Greek word that is translated to "very religious" is "deisidaimonesterous". It's a big word, big enough to have three root words buried inside it:

1) Deido -- to fear or show reverence to
2) Daimon -- deities or bad spirits
3) Stereos -- firmly

In other words, Paul was saying that these guys "dread demons". Yikes! I mean, most sane people probably dread demons, but hopefully that isn't the primary motivating factor in our lives. The Athenians were so worred about it that Paul noted their "idol to an unknown God". You know, just to cover their bases and make sure no gods were missed. They feared retribution from any god not served correctly.

I wonder if most Christians are really any different than the Athenians in that regard. One of the saddest stories I've ever heard was about my own great aunt. She passed away several years ago after a lifetime of serving others and serving God. She taught hundreds of students in the World Bible School program, gave food to the hungry, etc...

Yet on her deathbed, she mentioned that she "hoped she'd done enough" to get to heaven. I am simply heartbroken that this crossed her mind at a time like that. I've heard countless sermons about how Christians can rest assured of our salvation and trust in God, yet those are usually followed with warnings about how easy it is to slip away into sin and be removed from the grace of God. No wonder people are afraid! And for a sweet, sweet family member to be in fear as her life ebbed away... tragic.

If fearing God is what it means to be religious, then no, I don't qualify. I am certainly spiritual, but maybe not religious, so perhaps Hal was right to change his description of me. Yes, I know that Proverbs says that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge", but I've also learned that fear is not an effective motivator for a healthy, generous life. At least not for me.

The word for "spirit" in the bible is usually "pneuma" in Greek. Pneuma can also mean breath or wind. I like that. So maybe a spiritual person is like someone who notices the wind, an invisible force that is always working and always impacting the world around us. You can't see it, but you can see the effects of it.

That's more my style.

True north -- a metaphor from my strange brain

I've been told over and over again that I am a strange thinker. From schoolteachers to colleagues to friends and family, people say that I just don't think like "everybody else".

Here's something I've been thinking about lately.

True North

Whether we're navigating an ocean liner or driving to the grocery store, any type of travel requires some sense of direction. If you want to actually reach your destination, at least.

We've built our maps based on the idea that north is "up". It's a standard across every map we have. It's a useful standard, one that can give everybody the same information to work from. And north always points to the north pole of our planet (true north, with a latitude of zero). There's also a "magnetic north" that's not actually at the north pole, but that's not important right now. Back to the metaphor.

We've arranged our maps with north as a standard direction. This also provides us with a reference point to figure out south, west, east, etc...

Yet I don't think there's any great debate over whether our planet's north is also north for the universe. Heck, we don't even talk about directional standards for our solar system or galaxy, let alone the whole universe. It's too big, it's expanding rapidly and rotating on itself... the very fabric of space is curved! How do you pick a single point and call it "north" in a curved space? We don't bother. And even if we picked a directional standard, we can't really prove it's the "right" one anyway. We haven't seen the whole universe yet.

The concept of North is for our own planet, and with that standard we can drive to the library or use a satellite in orbit to take a picture of a house. It's amazing what we can accomplish once we all agree on a standard. Yet we know that the universe doesn't answer to our little human standard. North is useful here, and that's enough for planet-bound people like us.

The application

The vast, vast majority of religious debate is about concepts that we cannot prove in any way whatsoever. Debates about life after death or biblical inerrancy -- impossible to resolve. Ever.

Those are big-picture, universal issues that are far beyond us. If it was possible to get some sort of agreement and resolution on those things, we'd at least be headed in that direction, right? And where is Christianity? Fragmented into thousands of denominations due to disagreements over unsolvable mysteries.

I've given that up. I have no idea where "true north" is on a universal level when it comes to God. I don't know if Christians, Buddhists, Hindus or Mormons are closer to the universal truth. I can't even prove God exists at all, much less if it's a He or She or how it feels about using musical instruments in a church building. I've let all that stuff go.

Instead, I'm focused on what's useful. Here. In this life. Even if we can't agree on the universal truths, can the religious community still make progress toward a common direction for our little planet? Some principles or concepts that transcend culture and denomination? That's what I seek.

My True North is compassion and unconditional grace. My West is the realization that we are all connected to each other. My East is the desire to make the world a better place in my own tiny way while having fun. My South is the unflinching assertion that I'm no better, and no more valuable, than any other human being alive or dead.

I can live with these. I can navigate this life with principles like that. They're useful, and I know that they're useful because I've seen how those principles are changing me.

Doctrines and creeds never changed me like that, so I've quit trying them on. They don't fit.