Transformers takes its Revenge on the Box Office but Beware!

Transformers 2 or it’s full title: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is about to take in $100m and is on pace to set a record breaking opening for a 5 day take. Bravo! As someone who loves entertainment, that is a huge feat and something admirable. However, call it ‘old age’ or call it my ‘youth pastor eyes’ settling in, I’ve got to ask: is it really?

I really wanted to love this movie! I had some beef with the transforming and actual movements/clarity of the actual Transformers in the first one, it just seemed sloppy and you couldn’t really tell what was happening in the fight scenes. WOW, they totally fixed that! It’s quite stunning the effects and how good they’ve gotten them for these ginormous metallic beasts!

However, my beef with this movie is Michael Bay’s pushing the envelope for his PG-13 rating. It’s no secret I truly despise Bay’s Actiomedies, but for a movie based off of a child’s play toy this is NOT A MOVIE FOR CHILDREN…can I say that again? For a movie based on toys this is NOT A MOVIE FOR THE CHILDREN WHO PLAY WITH THESE TOYS! To not do more damage than good here I’m simply list my issues and allow that to be your warning:

• Language – sure there isn’t an f-bomb dropped but nearly every other foul word is and multiple times
• Sensuality – we had just a taste of it in the first one. From dogs humping to robot scrotums to college shenanigans to that weird guy’s butt in addition to having another sexy vixen added showing off her assets on top of what we already get from Meghan Fox.
• Drug usage – Mom gets a dose of some ‘green brownies’ and trips out on campus
• Violence - sure it’s mostly battle scenes with robots but wowzers there’s alot
• Length - it’s 2 and a half hours long! Crikey! My attention span is hard enough to hold for that long!

Now you might say: DANG THAT MAKES FOR A GREAT MOVIE! And as a 30 yr old I might agree with you! As a Dad bringing my kid or a Youth leader bringing  my group I’d say “Woah Nelly!” Just make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.

As far as the critics are complaining about plot and character development and emotions: IT’S A MOVIE ABOUT ROBOTS! I didn’t think the plot was that hard to follow. It was ALOT of set up for a 45 minute fight scene. Was it all necessary? Probably not. Made for some cool back story though but I’m not sure I’m better for it. I thought the character’s emotions were right on. Again, the crux of this is on the robots. The people are there to run and scream
Let’s be honest with what we have here: an over the top summer blockbuster action movie made by Michael Bay so it’s got some goofy shenanigans in it. So it’s a great entertaining break from the heat and they’ll blow up everything in the movie so it’s even more fun to see in the theaters…and by the looks of it, it’ll be there for a while!

The Joint returns! Highest rated review yet: Sojourn Music Over the Grave

It’s been a while so let me remind you, The Joint is a collaborative music review by yours truly and 2 other bloggers whose opinions I highly value! Hopefully, you the listener will get a great indication of whether or not you should fork our your hard earned $9.99 for the CD or not.

COMMENT ON ANY OF THE 3 BLOGS THAT REVIEWED THIS CD
AND BE ENTERED TO WIN YOUR OWN COPY!

Sojourn Music – Over the Grave

Pick it up here now.

Alastair Vance – Go to Live to Worship he’s got a new banner that’s wicked cool!

Synopsis:
Wow!  Hot on heels of On The Move by Aslan Worship is another amazing worship album from Sojourn Music – Over The Grave.  From the very first song (Warrior) this album oozes quality.  I love the contemporary, bluesy rock sound of the album while the lyrics remain rock solid.  While not every song could easily be played the way Sojourn perform it, there is plenty of material on here to suit everyone.

Bottom Line: I hope we keep getting great albums like this to review on The Joint.  It’s new, fresh and totally engages you in worship.  A substantial addition to my music collection!
Rating: 4.5 out of 5!

Must Have Songs:
Over The Grave is full of great songs, but there are a few that I just love.
Warrior (this is my favorite song on the album – what a great sound!), Living Faith, How Long, Only Your Blood (reminds me a little of a Keane song), Reveal Your Love, Over Death (slight Jars of Clay feel), Refuge, We Are Changed,.and Saviour King.  Hang on – that’s nearly every song on the album.

In Church: Only Your Blood, Over Death, Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed, May Your Power Rest On Me, Saviour King.

Joel Klampert – Go to Klampert.com

Synopsis: Can the words fresh and Ancient really go hand in hand? Sojourn makes you think with this CD because every song is from the Hymn writer Issac Watts yet they created one of the most refreshing CD’s I have heard to date.
I have been a fan of Sojourn since I was introduced to their Advent CD and later Before the Throne, but this one is an absolute achievement. Within seconds of pressing play on my iPod I was floored and had to even post to twitter ” HOLY COW!!” If you don’t have the same reaction then you need to check to see if you have a pulse.
This is a CD of hymns. Sojourn is very different than other artists that do “modern” hymns. They dont just make it faster and tag on a chorus. They create a whole new song and it becomes modern and rich.
This Church is Chock full of talented artists and musicians. The production was done in-house By Neil Robins. Let me tell you I can’t remember when I have heard a better-produced CD.

Bottom Line: I could literally go on for hours about how revolutionary this CD and how rich it’s theology is. How amazing the sound is and how cool all of the vintage instrumentation mixed with modern sound is…But I won’t.
The “bottom Line” is this. This CD is the best CD of 2009 hands down. And if you could only have one CD to put on your shelf this year. You had better pick this one up!
Rating: 4.5 out of 5!

Must Haves: Please don’t take this as a cop out, but I think every song on this CD is a must have. My favorites are: Warrior (OH MY!!), How Long (was waiting for guest solo from ZZtop), Only Your Blood, Over Death.

In Church: I’d say try them all. The vocalists are SO good on this CD that it may be a little daunting, but with some key changes I think every song on this CD has a place in church.

Conner Byrd – stick around here @ WorshipCity

Synopsis: What I love so much about Sojourn’s CD Over the Grave is it’s personality! This was my introduction to Sojourn music (I had to ask the guys what exactly they were? Church? Band? Worship Team?) Sojourn Music is a dynamic group of musicians that make up the worship team there at their church. And a dynamic bunch they are! I believe there are 4 different lead vocals, there’s the blues, driving acoustics, raunchy electrics, beautiful piano, soulful gospel spiritual, pop and somehow they pretty much pull it off!! It’s truly impressive! AND the professionalism in the recording is spectacular as well. It doesn’t get much better than this. It should be mentioned that this music is all inspired and taken from hymns from Isaac Watts. I don’t know a single one but they’ve done an incredible job of taking some difficult subject matter that doesn’t crop up in modern worship music so much and mash it with their worship styles and create this experience that totally works! If I’m honest…I’m typically not a fan of these projects. They come off like Blended Worship Services. Trying to please everyone while aggravating anyone! But something special happens here.

Bottom Line: There’s a little bit of everything in here for you! You want blues? You like Mayer or Brewster? Got it! You want gospel spiritual chain gang revival? Got it! You like Tower of Power? Check! How about some throwback 70s rock? Oh yeah. What’s great is hearing some of the band’s obvious influences while at the same time not loosing their own identity! I swear I hear Silversun Pickups’ Lazy Eye in the beginning of Over Death!
Sojourn has done a fabulous job of creating seemingly simple songs but being smart about their layering and in doing so keeping it creative and interesting. I also love that despite having obvious vocal talent we aren’t bombarded with constant backing vocals! This team is obviously conscientious about crafting their music and not just bludgeoning us with everything they’ve got. THANK YOU SOJOURN!
Rating: 4 out of 5!

Must have: Opening track Warrior is just sick! HOW LONG! Ugh! Raucous and obnoxious and awesome! Over Death not only drives with the acoustic but has “monster” and “damning” in a PRAISE SONG! Come on people! Honestly only Refuge and Savior King haven’t grown on me. The first is a bit too CCM and the 2nd..eh.

In Church: It’s a worship project! So…all!?!?! I suppose a worship leader would just need to be wise about which songs fit or don’t fit with his or her team and makeup. Chords and lyrics are available on their site. I think Reveal Your Love isn’t as congregationally friendly and I think Alas! (while I dig it!) would get stale without a team that’s able to pull it off. Let’s not forget this is a church worship team but they’ve set the bar HIGH! So dig in leaders and take some pride in what you do and get on it!

The Joint has it’s highest ranked CD so far! Sojourn Music’s Over the Grave gets a combined 4.5!
Apparently the ‘best’ songs as mentioned by all 3 of us are:
Warrior, How Long, Over Death, and Only Your Blood.

Don’t forget to comment here or on the other 2 guys’ blogs to hopefully get picked to get your own copy! It’s not even on iTunes yet people!!

The Best Thing to Happen to the Internet Since Sliced Bread!

E! a mogul of entertainment news and shenanigans has heard the people’s cry and granted us:

Say goodbye to Heidi and Spencer Pratt. As far as E! is concerned, the conspicuous couple occasionally self-referred to as Speidi are so dunzo.

A startling 94 percent of you elected for the Hills stars’ immediate expulsion. Consider them gone from our wheelhouse, voted off the island, fired, out and any other appropriate reality-show catchphrase.

Their planned attempt at hijacking the I’m a Celebrity?Get Me Out of Here! reunion special on Wednesday? You won’t read about it here. Barring any actual news (e.g., she gets knocked up, he falls off a cliff or—heaven help us—her album goes to No. 1), consider this their very last post.

Thank You E! Mad love to you!

SYTYCD Music Takeaway

It’s summertime and that’s when Rae and I endulge our reality TV appetite with Wipeout, The Ultimate Fighter, and of course the GREATEST reality show competition there is: SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE! I dare you to disagree with me but that will be another discussion.This discussion will revolve around one of the many aspects I love about the show: the music!

So each week, I’ll list my favorite new songs that I’ve found watching our favorite reality show! This week there were 4:

1. Falling Slowly by The Frames – such a great track! Mesmerizing!
2. 24 Hours (Ashton Shuffle A-bomb mix) by Terry Poison – quirky, crazy, weird, I love it!
3. Imma Be by the Black Eyed Peas – sorry the Peas are a guilty pleasure! Can they do wrong?
4. Violento (Up Mix) by Bailango! – not sure if I got this right, couldn’t find them but a gritty Spanish tango!!

Life Lessons from Vegas

We spent a week in Las Vegas for my surprise 30th birthday present with 4 GREAT friends and I’m tremendously behind in the sharing of stories and pictures. While I catch up, I’ll share with you some things I learned in my short stay in Sin City

Fashion Lies

FASHION IS NOT A LUXURY

I saw this on a shirt in a store that sold t-shirts for $200.00. WHAT!?! I mean, I could see this on a silly shirt in Wal-Mart or even a graphic tee from like Hollister but from this high end boutique where everything is stupid expensive, the absurdity of this statement isn’t hilarious it’s ridiculous. I wanted to take my flip flop off and scmack the guy behind the counter.
Here this well people: clothes are just clothes! Respect yourself and your appearance but you ever take yourself to the point where you buy a $300 shirt that spits that disease in my face and I’ll slap you too

Don’t eat so much!

I don’t know where all the cheap casino buffets were! We chose to treat ourselves to some nice places but even at our down meals we noticed real quickly that it’d be best to split plates and we found out that WOW they make large portions! I think Rae and I are going to really look into splitting meals more often. Even the extra 2 or 3 bucks to split the entree is better than a whole other entree’s price and portion…unless I can bring it home and eat it for leftovers the next day! What we didn’t notice even after splitting 1 entree was our hunger! Even with the smaller portions we weren’t hungry later on! So yeah, we’re going to eat less and spend less eating out!

Blast You Will Ferrell!!!

I got a tweet a while back about some news regarding Will Ferrell helping Donald Miller co-write his new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Surely, it couldn’t be true!?!?! So I followed the link. Nope it wasn’t the Onion. An article described a bit of the process and I got jacked about the possibility of a book tour with Don Miller and stinkin’ Will Ferrell.

I got informed tonight that it’s so ever useful and helpful to always click on the READ MORE>>>

B/c if I had then I would have seen the next screen telling me that it was a brilliant joke by Will Ferrell and such a faux article can be written about yourself as well having you as the co-author. I should have done that before running my mouth to a few friends and family members.

Still love you Miller and Ferrell but dang I got BURNED! Still can’t wait for the new book!!

Summer Splash and a Story

So, we’ve said that our church was a place for families and where families come together; however saying that and doing that is two completely different things. We still operated like a traditional, normal church did. You know: church wide event and the kids go over there on the space walk, the women go in the shade and talk over Iced Tea, the men go sweat in the sun with the grills or pots or what have you, and the youth go cause trouble.

It’s amazing what a stripped budget and networking can do for you. After trying to get creative with our Thanksgiving Feast last year, I happened upon a blog post by Dan over at life as best as I remember it… and a light bulb truly went off! We’ve done our family events different ever since and today was our first ever Summer Splash!

Our new bent is to create an environment where families play together! This is our 3rd event stylized this way. This time around we had stations set up for water games, we had 2 slip-n-slides, we had a water mellon carving contest, all trying to keep families engaged together, playing together and playing with other families together! And it’s been tremendous!

In addition, this time around we had a Youth fundraiser for camp and we sold Jambalaya dinners for $5. A story I just MUST TELL YOU!

We got to the end of the afternoon and had a few plate dinners left so we made signs and waved down passers by and tried to lure them to our tasty jambalaya

I met Reed. He paid for his 2 dinners and I handed him his change back. Walking to pick up the dinner plates I introduced myself since I didn’t recognize him. He was lured off the street and on his way home and thought he’d pick up dinner. I couldn’t believe it actually worked and told him about what was going on and why we were raising $$$ to send our kids to camp and basically gave diarrhea of the mouth
The cool thing was that I thanked Reed for stopping in and helping out and he returned me his change and was grateful to be able to help, wanting it all to go towards the students camps this Summer!

Thank you God. Thank you Reed. Stories like that are what make the day all worth it.

Pictures and update soon!

How was your Sunday?

Coldplay Life in New Orleans

I witnessed the best concert I’ve ever been to Tuesday night as the culmination of my 30th birthday surprises ended at the New Orleans arena at the Coldplay concert! The show was moved up to 7pm which was only a half hour earlier than scheduled but seeing how we didn’t get out of there until after 11, I was thankful! This was one of the best line ups I’ve seen:

• Howling Bells
• Snow Patrol
• COLDPLAY

So we had our fare share of awesome accents – Australian, Irish, and British (actually distinct when you hear them 1 after another and the Irish was the best!) The bands were all talented. I kept telling Rae and Ali, if “they” are this good then Coldplay is going to be NUTS!! And they were!! For one of the world’s biggest rock bands they haven’t lost the ability to connect with members of their audience, even at a huge arena show!

Enough of my jibba jabba. Here are the boys kickin’ it in New Orleans:

Here’s the video that helps that make sense, in case you haven’t seen 1 of the greatest music videos

And here are some of our pics:

Here’s what made up their 2 hour masterpiece

• Life In Technicolor
  Violet Hill
  Clocks
  In My Place
  Yellow
  Glass Of Water
  Cemeteries Of London
  42
  Fix You
  Strawberry Swing
  God Put A Smile Upon Your Face (techno version)
  Talk (techno version)
  The Hardest Part (Chris piano)
  Postcards From Far Away (piano instrumental)
  Viva La Vida
  Lost!
  Green Eyes (acoustic)
  Death Will Never Conquer (acoustic – Will vocals)
  I’m A Believer (Neil Diamond Cover – acoustic)
  Viva La Vida (remix interlude)
  ——
  Politik
  Lovers In Japan
  Death And All His Friends
  ——-
  The Scientist
  Life in Technicolor ii
  The Escapist (outro)

MUTEMATH Armistice available Aug 18!

This is the kind of email I LOVE opening!

Recorded in New Orleans and Oxford, MS and produced by Dennis Herring (Elvis Costello, Modest Mouse, The Hives), the record is scheduled for release on Aug 18th.

Nearly 50 minutes in total, MUTEMATH does not play it safe on their sophomore effort. With a stunning range of dynamics, ARMISTICE boasts the kind of masterful production and songwriting that ensure it to be one of the year’s standout albums.Expect to hear this album very soon. More details to be revealed shortly. Keep an eye on mutemath.com for future announcements, tour dates, merch, special offers and much more.

Oh Happy Day! August cannot get here fast enough! The Nerve is up on MySpace and their site so go get it and get giddy!! GIDDY! I’M GIDDY!! GIDDY UP!

Now if they’ll just announce tour dates!

This isn’t happening. Pinch me.

A week ago I woke up in sunny beautiful Las Vegas, NV with my wife and 4 of my best friends. It was the greatest surprise, best vacation, most amazing birthday EVER!

Today I wake up in sunny muggy Baton Rouge, LA with 3 tickets to see Coldplay tonight in New Orleans with my wife adn 1 of our best friends! It’s going to be the greatest concert EVER!

I can’t recall how many times I’ve muttered,

This isn’t happening. Pinch me. What’s going on? This is amazing

over the past 10 days! So while my blogging has been light, watch out because it’s about to pick up!

Follow my twitterfeed tonight @ twitter.com/worshipcity for Coldplay goodies. Turning 30 has never felt so good