COMEDY. nick swardson

recently i heard a really funny clip from this guy on a mix cd. he had this funny bit about how he has started saying 'party' all the time. it became his response whenever someone would ask him something. 'hey, want to go to the club?' 'party'. diana and i really thought it was hilarious. she didnt know who the comedian was, but i recognized his voice from different movies ive seen him in. i didnt know his name, but i new he was one of the guys who was always hanging around david spade (who i think is hilarious).

we happened to be wandering around target when i noticed that they had his comedy cd. it was only ten bucks, and included his cd and a dvd of some of his comedy central specials. so, we figured we would give it a try.

turns out, hes not really very funny. his 'party' bit is his best. the rest of the cd is quite lame. it even includes a couple 'skits', which is so old school. most of his humor revolves around fart jokes and dirty stuff thats not very funny. i guess i could see this appealing to 13 year old boys, but we were sorely disappointed. there are some funny observations on old people near the end, but five minutes of good jokes are not worth the fifty five minutes it takes to get to it.

NEWSPAPER. main street coffee house

a few years ago i used to live in salt lake city. while i lived there i attended a church that was a bit unusual; it was a church, but also a coffee shop used as an outreach ministry in salt lake city. i really loved it there, and almost all of my fond memories of utah stem from that place. i recently rediscovered an article that ran in the baptist press about the coffee house! it even features a picture of me back when i used to have long hair (dang, i miss that...). here is a quick snippet from the article, and the link to the rest of the article and photos:

SALT LAKE CITY (BP)--It's no secret that there's something about a cup of good coffee that helps people connect -- whether on Sunday morning at church, around a neighbor's kitchen table or over a mocha latte at the nearest Seattle-based coffee emporium.A new church in downtown Salt Lake City has taken the concept one step further. Realizing relational-based ministry can't be confined to a traditional church schedule, the fledgling Summit Church set up the full-service Main Street Coffee House offering varieties of fresh coffee drinks as an avenue for touching lives throughout the week.

TV. the andromeda strain

a couple weeks ago there was a two part mini series on a&e called 'the andromeda strain'. i was quite excited to see this. ive been a big fan of this story for a while, and was eager to see how they would update it.
its based on an old book by michael crichton, the author of 'jurassic park' and 'sphere'. i read the book years ago back when i was in high school and really loved it. i also discovered soon after that there was an old movie based on the book that came out in 1971. the story itself is very technology based, so it is very dated.
the story goes like this: a satellite crashes down in a small utah town and something inside it kills almost everybody in the town. an old man and a baby live, but everyone else exposed to it dies. its up to a group of scientists and military men to try and make sense of it and figure out what should be done. there is a lot of discussion about what the virus is and how we can get rid of it before it effects anyone else. its a very intriguing premise and tensely written. the old movie did a pretty good job of portraying the story and the race to figure out what happened, but a lot of technology and how we look at viruses has changed since the early seventies, so it was certainly time to update the story.
the mini series was pretty good, they did a nice job of keeping all the basic elements but modernizing it to todays scientific and political climate. the story still clips along at a good pace, though the inclusion of a rogue journalist seemed a bit unnecessary. also, they seemed to have dumbed it down from it original level. in the book and old movie there is a real sense of trying to learn what it is and examining all options. it really seemed like the scientists were intelligent people logically working through the situation. on this version they just seem to make crazy jumps in logic and then go with it, and somehow each jump is exactly correct. also, they changed the ending quite a bit, which was a disappointment. one of the great things about crichtons books is that he rarely drops the ball with the ending (steven king could learn a lot from this guy...) but they always seem to change it when they turn it into a film (dont even get me started on how crappy the altered ending was for 'the sphere'...)

TV. colbert report

i watch the colbert report often. its absolutely hysterical! i love colberts persona as a right wing pundit. the reason i bring up this show is because steven recently had a guest on who had some interesting and insightful things to say. colbert always plays it for laughs, but i was intrigued by what his guest, george will, had to say: "the difference between conservatives and liberals comes down to the basics of freedom and equality. republicans favor freedom and are willing to accept certain inequalities for a free market, democrats favor equality of outcome and are willing to sacrifice certain freedoms for that end."