Flightless Bird, American Mouth....

Cool song I'm falling in love with....its a little out there..but the melody is so sweet and it makes me think about the realities adn emotionl impact of situations far beyond the silly obscurity of the lyrics...
Its very melancholy, and I'm feeling it a bit right now...either the song is enhancing it or causing it, I can't tell definitely so its probably a bit of both...
But I'm not sad, I'm actually really happy. Everything is brought into focus for some reason. I'm not going to question it, just enjoy it while it lasts.

'Flightless Bird, American Mouth' by Iron&Wine
lyrics:

I was a quick wet boy, diving too deep for coins

All of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys

Then when the cops closed the fair,

I cut my long baby hair

Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere

Have I found you

Flightless bird, jealous, weeping or lost you, american mouth

Big pill looming

Now I'm a fat house cat

Nursing my sore blunt tongue

Watching the warm poison rats curl through the wide fence cracks

Pissing on magazine photos

Those fishing lures thrown in the cold

And clean blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you

Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding or lost you, american mouth

Big pill stuck going down

Getting in the holiday Spirit

The top 25 Christmas movies of all time...according to moviefone?!?!?!?

Some of these (I feel) are WAY off!!!!...starting with:

25. The Polar Express- I couldn't stomach it..what a horrible thing to do to a classic children’s book!!!bad..tom hanks... bad bad...no... stop it....

24. We’re No Angels- never heard of it, maybe I’m uncultured??? Humphrey Bogart...

23. The Muppet Christmas Carol_ Michael Kane and Kermit- GAH!!

22. Joyeux Noel- This is one I would like to see. it is an incredible story about the ceasefire on Christmas during WWI, but I like my war movies on Veteran’s and Memorial days, maybe on the fourth of July...not so much Christmas

21. Gremlins- Now we’re talking!!! and I love it even if that makes me a dork. Mogwai+Christmas=love "bright light bright light!"


20. The Santa Clause- Shoot me now. This movie sucked so much. Actually, the 15 minutes I watched sucked, I'm guessing about the rest of it...


19. Bad Santa- I actually haven’t seen this but have heard it was funny, if crude…( which is kind of why I didn't see it...Billy bob kind of grosses me out...I can take a gross comedy but not on Jesus' birthday....)

18. The Dead- Another classic, um haven’t seen it, but the story by James Joyce was good…not a huge fan of Anjelica Houston though and the title kind of makes me not want to watch it on Christmas.


17. The Shop around the Corner- Okay, I thought I knew my movies...I would like to see this I did not know that the 'You’ve Got Mail' debacle was based on a classic…with Jimmy Stewart even!!!


16. Die Hard- W-O-W best Christmas action in town...amazing flick "Yippie-Ki-yay..."

15. Love Actually- um that movie was so dumb, and more like ‘sex actually’ pretentious self-absorbed Brits sleeping with each other on the holidays…no thank you…

14. The Bishop’s Wife- a classic of course and better than 'The Preacher’s Wife' remake, but not one of my 'must see's at Christmas


13. The Nightmare before Christmas- I think I am one of the few people that has not seen this movie…Krissy’s favorite J

12. Holiday Inn- LOVE LOVE LOVE this movie!!!I have always loved this film, this is the first time White Christmas was sung.


11. A Christmas Carol (1951 version with Alastair Sim) This is a good version that kind of creeps me out…in the good Dickens way of course...

10. National Lampoon’s Christmas vacation- Chevy Chase at his finest…


9. Babes in Toyland- No no no. This one always gave me freaky nightmares as a child…Laurel and Hardy just are creep-tastic

8. Home Alone- used to love it…it can get so overdone though, its played-out


7. Christmas in Connecticut- never seen it, or heard of it…Barbara Stanwyk…1942

6.ELF- is there awesome in this movie? Than YES!


5. White Christmas- One of my all-time favorite’s since I was a kid…I love Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in this movie, its so much fun

4. Scrooged- AMAZING, gives me the warm fuzzy when they staple antlers to the mice....

3. Miracle on 34th Street- More of a Thanksgiving movie for me…but of course a great movie , "You're Intoxicated!"


2. It’s a wonderful Life- This should not be number 2…

1. A Christmas Story- I would flip this one with "Its a Wonderful Life"

Those last two are the best of all time...I have to watch them every year...

So what would you add to this list?????

my person additions...in no way does this make these movies great, I just like them...

Bells of St. Mary's- C'mon people at moviefone...what the heck!!!????

The Ref- I'm a sucker for Dennis Leary

Jingle All the Way- Its so horrible that its funny...one of Phil Hartman's last movies. Arnold is terrible and so is Sinbad, but Phil's scenes are great...and "I know what I'm talking about because I Went to junior college for a semester and I studied Psychology"

The Family Stone- I liked Luke Wilson and Rachel McAdams in this..it was kind of cute...if overly sentimental adn proud of itself...

I know they aren't movies but 'Christmas Specials' but I love:
'A Charlie Brown Christmas" is amazing...
and
"How The Grinch Stole Christmas" every who down in whoville gives it two thumbs up....and
"The House without a Christmas Tree"...*tear*


here is a list of the ten worst Christmas movies of all time...http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/top-5/the-ten-worst-christmas-movies-of-all-time.php
but that list forgets..."Christmas comes to Willow Creek" which reunited those pesky Duke boys....

Well, I've got to get back to work at my little parish here in CT...The youth group is in charge of making 120 Thanksgiving baskets for the poor...The secretary and I are preparing...we're sorting all of the food, turkeys and pies in the garage (which looks like a grocery store right now (PRAISE GOD!!!) AND our resident Santa Clause (aka Richard Zotti..he has an AMAZING beard) just dropped off a Christmas tree (my hands smell and feel like sap) for our fair on Saturday AND we have to print up all the programs for the Ecumenical Thanksgiving service on Sunday evening...AND I have to go to liqueur store and get more empty boxes to put he food in for the families because we ran out...so now I'm going to be like, "Hello Happy thanksgiving, here is your basket of food...yes that is a Smirnoff box..." classy I know....

I'm losing my mind a little bit...

Maybe if I watch more movies I can forget reality enough to function robotically this year.

"Now Harry, Sam, have a lot of fun..."

And I'm done...because I'm not nearly

Top Chef New York! My life needs more meaning...

So this past Sunday I was late for work because Chris and Krissy and I watched a Top Chef marathon...well I watched, krissy was packing and watching and Chris mocked..but it was a really funny show...Ilan defeated Marcel!!! Yay!

The new season premiered last night. Top Chef New York..
tag line "With over 650,00 food service workers in the city that never sleeps...the competition is fiercer than ever before...if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." said over dramatic music...

After eliminations from a challenge of who could peel 15 apples the fastest with a pearing knife...which led to apples covered in blood...but well peeled....one 'top chef' candidate was sent to 'pack up your knives and go home' before ever getting to see the Top Chef kitchen *tear* poor Lauren, she really wantred to be Top Chef!

They took the remaining 16 top chefs and sent them in pairs to different parts of the city to be inspired to make ethnic food...i.e. China Town, Little Italy, Astoria, Brighten Beach...etc...
and unfortunately yet inevitably another chef was eliminated later for a sub-par chinese dish with 'gummy' rice noodles...and you call yourself a CHEF!!!! its back to the Culinary Institue of America for Patrick...so sad...he really wanted to be Top Chef too!

They have quite a collection of chefs...the three gay ones call themselves "Team Rainbow" and the two Europeans think , "its really time for a European to be Top Chef" Yes because winning an american game show will prove to the world that they are wrong in that age old assumption thatAmerican chef's are superior to European ones....wow... Another chef from Miami runs around teh kitchen talking to himself like a crazy person adn is constantly talking about his looks and how he always makes sure his waitstaff checks his hair before he goes out front...
its going to fun watching this.

In the scenes for next week...one of the really mean judges is seen spitting into a napkin and saying "I have found the weapns of mass destruction...and they are in this bowl." That pretty much made my night..I can't wait until next Wednesday...somehow seeing really arrogant chefs reduced to tears by pompous judges for an hour really makes me feel good about myself...

I shouldn't watch...but I know I probably will...

good day to you

grief, love and perspective

I just returned from an unexpected quick trip to Philadelphia to see one of my best friends and NET teammates, Brianna. Her younger brother died last Tuesday and the funeral was yesterday and I really wanted to be there for her.

We are very close, and Brianna is someone that I know will always be there for me...but both of our lives have been in such a state of fluctuation, financial issues and overall stressful situations that the last time we spent together was a few weeks during the summer of 2005....I have missed her and we have made plans that have gotten canceled over and over again.

Finally we made plans for Halloween weekend this year and it was all set...and Friday morning she left a message that something had happened with her family, please call, she can't make it...

We played phone tag all weekend...and it wasn't until Monday evening that I found out the 'thing' that had happened with her family was her 21 year old brother Michael's apparent drug overdose that was not uncovered for several days. Brianna was devastated, and also being a rock for her family.

I drove down to Philly and went to the funeral and mourned with Michael's friends and family, listened to touching and beautiful sentiments shared by Brianna and her siblings Katie and Andrew. I hugged and cried with her parents and cousins and friends, played with Katie's two young children, and talked music with Andrew who is an amazing drummer. I didn't know Michael well at all, but you don't need to know someone well to be able to mourn them...and seeing the love coupled with grief in the Duffy family put a lot of things in perspective for me...

I refuse to let stress or money or inconvenience or distance,s top me from loving and being with the people that I care about. Sometimes we don't have tomorrow. I'm not going to waste a moment of it taking anything or anyone for granted.

Seeing Brianna's parents so broken by losing Michael broke my heart, and reminded me that my own family had felt such a tragedy also and that God can be present in any and all circumstances...seeing the love shared by their family gave me hope for their eventual healing, and knowing that "All things work for good for those who serve the Lord" put my concerns for mankind in general at bay.

Its so hard to see a young life snuffed out before its time, this is the fourth young man's funeral I've gone to in a year, and in all of them the horrible disease of addiction is rearing its head in our culture and our youth and that makes me feel frustrated and angry and somewhat helpless...

But, we cannot sit idly by. We can pray and provide help and support to organizations and people that are trying to help fight for this cause. Anyone out there reading this, please support your local DARE office as per the request of the Duffy family.

I remind myself also that the Lord's ways are not our ways. I have a feeling that when we get to heaven it will be like turning the light on in a dark room that we have been trying to imagine or grasp at on our own...when all is illuminated, when we are present in the glory of God...

I'm reminded of the famous verse in the book of Revelation, "and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away."

Better times are always ahead of us, even if it is not until we get to heaven, and for myself I'm going to live in the moment and I really don't want to emotionally invest in political rhetoric (I did vote, but it didn't hold much significance for me with these more important things on my mind) or sports (The Duffys are huge Phillies fans...so I didn't fight off the Mets fan razzzzzing- I took it like trooper....and I let it go for now anyway....), or anything on television ( a friend's grandma jokingly called TV "Satan's tabernacle"....but then again, there was a great Peru South Park episode last week...I'm only human!) or my job's drama that was flaring up a bit (I'm working really hard to leave work drama at work and with those that create it...it belongs to them, not to me).

I know that I try to be the best version of myself that I can and I love my family and friends. I pray for them everyday, and I miss them and I'm going to make more of an effort to visit and call more often. I'm excited to be taking off for Christmas this year for the first time in 4 years, well its a start!

Overall, the last few days have been emotionally and physically draining and I officially hate the George Washington Bridge, tolls, the Jersey Turnpike, driving in Philly in general and any and all Canadian truckers....

The past few days I felt really empty at times and had to remind myself to have faith regardless of whether I FELT that faith or not. Funerals and burials and grief are so emotionally surreal for me while being clearly based in strong physical reality, and these experiences are acutely painful for most people. At times it can make me cynically question human nature a bit as well, funerals can seem like some strange mix between paying respects and voyeurism.

I believe the human condition is one that lends itself easily to faith as well as to the rejection of it. Faith for many is a status quo type of thing, it goes up during prosperity, and during trials, many try to fight faith off with a stick of logic as their weapon of choice. Then there is also the aspect of the reality in the midst of our grief that we will go one day as well.

For me, I don't believe I have as many questions about death as most people do, because of my faith. I try to use my logic to explain my faith rather than try to explain it away. None are more grief stricken during times like this than those without faith, so thankfully Brianna's family has a strong faith, tested now in fire.

All this being said...I still feel very drained and tired and sad...

All my thoughts and prayers remain with the Duffy family. Please pray for them too.