Stupid Protests 2
... as seen on JordonCooper.com

- Peace

Alberta Recording artist Jan Arden has a blog.
... as seen on HomoTextual.

- Peace

Now the Truth Can Be Told: Steve Taylor on what happend to Squint Entertainment

Steve Taylor gives his first interview on why he had to leave Squint at Cornerstone 2003. Here are the highlights.

In the fall of 2000, Roland [ed: guy who did the original deal with Steve] was pushed out of his position at Word. I guess the best way to put this would be in biblical language: the new pharaoh knew not Steve.

So Word decided to sell Squint. Big Idea tried to buy Squint with Steve, but as we know now Big Idea had a cash crunch funding Johna. And that was the end of that.

So what's he doing now? Is there any hope for a new album?

Those of you who are wondering what I've been doing for the last two years, I've been working almost exclusively, especially for the last nine months, on film projects. One of them sounds suspiciously like something you've heard before, but I really think this one is going to happen. We're supposed to start shooting in January. It's decent budget, $2.1 million dollars. The trick about movies, of course, is it takes so much money to make them. You can't go into your own studio and record something for $15,000, or something like that. You have to find people with money, and I'm not very good at that, as you know. But I think this one is going to happen.

You'll hear all about the project when it's announced, but that's supposed to be shot in January. Even these two concerts were a little bit awkward because movie people are used to hearing ideas from music people, but they just look at it as a hobby. I think they are inherently suspicious of music people wanting to get into movies. I've had to go out of my way to make sure that everybody knows I'm not doing music anymore, that this film pursuit is real, that that's what I'm doing with all my time. I've managed to burn most music bridges behind me and I'm sure I'll be going back to those people and saying, listen it was just a joke. I made a terrible mistake. So I've put everything on making this film happen. It it's any good, maybe I'll get to do another one, and it it's not, it'll be my fault because there is certainly enough money to make something decent. So that's my plans for the near future.

Ok so at least the sound track should be cool, and being a total Steve fan, the movie (if it gets made) should rock.

Bonus quotes :
Steve on Country Music:

In country music, we have one genre, country, and we have one set of radio stations, and we all just are aimed at that one group of radio stations. ... I'm thinking, yeah, that's why country music, like, sucks completely

Steve on the Music Industry

the record industry is so corrupt and is founded on so many wrong foundations. And those get piled up on top of bad foundations to where it's just a very corrupt industry

Steve on fans getting the old albums

if you want to get them off the Internet, I have no problem with that, go ahead. They are not available, have at at.

-Peace
Dave

PS I'm the Dave mentioned at the begining of the article. And I asked the 1st and 3rd "Audience" questions.

After spending all week at C-Stone 2003 telling folks that I was the number two site for Dave King on Google, I get this email tonight

Dave,

I went looking for you in Google and you came up first. Your life is complete...

Joe

Well I wouldn't say compleet but I feel lucky. Maybe Joe will quit calling me Blog Boy and start calling me Blog Man. Yeah that would be better.

- Peace

Some folks have decided to give blogging a spin attending a couple of sessions with yours truly. Clearly these folks got too much sun a c-stone. It's my pleasure to introduce:

Nacho Average Blog – a high school student and fellow member of tribe geek. He has a deep love of all things microsoft.

Mozart's Pageturner has a great review of the movie Heaven.

Scott is still trying to figure out the significance of his blog title: Hardcore Poetics. Scott it just works, it is what is.

Heather's ambitious with two blogs Whisper the Muse Alive and Linguistic Liability.

Marry has her Tongue In Cheek and is thinking about dust.

Karen and John are telling their story as parents of a bipolar son on BipolarSupport. I hope they ceck out Alison's - Christian Depression Pages.

Adam is having fun with his never server and web cam over at The Blue System.

Nate His Royal Highness, the Emporer of Penguins. has been blogging for a while, but came by the seminar just to see what was up.

Some other blogs with Cornerstone Festival connections:

The folks at dreifuss.org - have been to c-stone.

brad boydston - is in part of the Evangelical Covenant Church, JPUSA's denomination. JPUSA host c-stone each year. JPUSA is pronounced je-poo-sa, by those in the know. Me I had to ask what Jepoosa was. Brad links to CT's Conerstone article.

Mustard on Your Leg got it's name from it's Cornerstone History.

Zac who's part of the Freq107 group was at C-Stone 2003 in an RV, not tenting with the masses.

Jason at Farmhouse Blues tell some cstone 2003 horror stories.

So there you go a whole crop of blogers with connections to Cornerstone. I'll turn this into a proper list this week. If you know of other C-stone related blogs, let me know.

- Peace

Traci Lords says FBI raid ending porn career 'saved my life’

I've tried to write about this before, but I've never been able to do it justice. John's widow asked me to speak at the memorial service today, so here's my best shot at explaining walking on holy ground.

For me it feels right to have this service on Friday. For the pas few weeks I've been heading up to the Rosedale hospice on Fridays to visit John. It was the highlight of my week to see John, to spend time with him was to walk on holy ground.

We'd talk about work, church, the squirrels that jumped from tree to tree out side John's window, the problems involved with plotting points on a globe, the books he was reading, how Bible study was going, the latest movie I'd seen. Just about anything.

We'd talk about how he was doing, What always came through was the sense of peace that God had given John. This was not an easy path by any means, he shared how his mind would race about a problem, and then God would show him that it wasn't a concern and he'd just relax. My prayers in the last few weeks have been “Lord give me the peace of mind you've given John, I want to be more like John”.

John had a peace and a joy that passes our understanding, that passes the things we don't understand. Who can make sense of the tragedy of losing John? I know I can't, all I know is it hurts. All I can do is pray that I would be open to God's love the way John was.

I can tell you that John lives with God in heaven today, because I was a witness to the Lord living with John. I'm deeply thankful to John for allowing me to walk on Holy ground with him.

- Peace

We're home from the trip. Just under 7000 km in all. I'd love to write more but I need to prepare to speak at a friend's Memorial Service tommorow.

- Peace

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Good things:
Good thing #1: Harry takes an important step in teaching the other kids about defence against the dark arts.
Good thing #2: The children work together at the end to face their fears and their enemy. (it just took too many pages to get there)

Bad things:
Bad thing #1: 800 pages; The pacing and feel of this book made me want to scream several times GET ON WITH IT! (the movie version will have the good bits and be much more bearable)
Bad thing #2: Children's Book?; This is the darkest book of the lot so far. If this book had been J. K. Rowling's first it would have been clearly stacked in young adult.
Bad thing#3: Rowling needs a new villain or needs to do something to make Voldemort more interesting.

Overall:
I must be becomming a muggle. I didn't like the Order of the Phoenix very much (although I think it will make for a decent movie)