Top 3--#4

Here we are again for another ranking of the Top 3...this week a subject that is near and dear to my heart...

TOP 3 1980's cartoons (for boys)--

"Back in My day" you looked forward to getting up early on saturdays to watch all the cartoons and you better not sleep in, no DVR and no Cartoon network! I threw in the caveat about being for boys so I don't get a bunch of hatemail from all the My little Pony and Care Bears fans out there but here are the best as I remember them, of course they must have memorable lines and a great song and the all important toy line tie in to keep your parents in the poor house trying to help you buy all the characters.

3. HE-Man

By the Power of Greyskull...

2. Transformers

Maybe it wasn't much more than met the eye, but it was fun and not a bad movie either.

1. G.I.JOE

Okay, so maybe I'm tainted by growing up in military communities, but what 8 year old didn't love it?

Honorable Mention--Thundercats!

So there it is my childhood glory remembered, now you know....and knowing is half the battle!

Quote of the week

In honor of my trip to his hometown...

"He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss."
--Niccolo Machiavelli

Reading List

So far this month I've read a few good books including...
Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson
Tribes by Seth Godin
God wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell
To Own a Dragon by Donald Miller


I'm planning to read the following while on planes, trains, and in hotels in Europe the next few days...
I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt
Made to Stick
The Love Dare
Spiritual Leadership

Wish me luck!

I love my Wife!

Today I'm headed to Europe. I will be leaving shortly for the airport and I'll arrive in Munich, Germany, at around 8 a.m. tomorrow morning local time. What is a little unusual about this trip is that I'm leaving my increasingly pregnant wife and wild three year old son in Tennessee while I go. Oddly, I haven't really gotten much questioning about it from people who know about the trip. That worries me a little, I wonder if they aren't asking because they don't think it's weird to leave your family for ten days or if it's just not weird for me to do it, either way...a little unsettling.

I won't go into all the details about the how this unfolded as it has or why I find myself on a plane alone. But I do want to take a moment to cover my itinerary and then talk about the best wife in the world.

As I've already mentioned I will arrive in Munich and drive over to Augsburg, where I was born 30 years and 2 months ago. I'll spend the day looking over the city I left when I was not quite as old as my own son is now. From there I'll head to Garmisch for a few days, should be cold!

On Monday morning I'll head through Austria and down to Florence, Italy, for a couple days. Florence might be my favorite city in the WORLD! My grandmother was from the Naples area, so I'm drawn to Italy, but I'm also a HUGE fan of Renaissance History and Nicolo Machiavelli...so Florence is pretty much the center of the universe for all things me.

After a couple days in Florence, and since it's on the way back, I'll head to Venice, which is way too romantic to visit without my wife, but I'll bring here something nice! After that, it's a drive back to Munich for the Hofbrauhaus and an early flight home the next morning...all in time to go Trick or Treating with the family on Halloween night...as long as my flights aren't delayed!

So now that I've rubbed a little salt in the wound...

My wife is many things, smart, funny, tall, sexy, confident, talented, and an awesome wife and mom. Probably her greatest gift is her ability to blow up in fits of rage like none other I've witnessed and then be totally ok within ten minutes. Seriously, this is a one of a kind women with the ability to love a guy who goes on trips to Europe without her and I am a better man because she is a part of my life.

When I first met her almost nine years ago, I never could have imagined that I could love anyone as much as I do her now. With every test and trial, I come out loving her more. The night we met, I asked her a question "Why haven't I met you yet?" I'm so glad she answered!

While I'm away, I will eat good food, see great sights, read, pray, journal, maybe even blog, but more than anything else, I will love and miss my wife!

Charlotte, NC

I haven't done one of these in a few weeks...so I'm back with one of my favorites. Charlotte is known as the Queen City and it is a lovely lady! From NASCAR to High Finance this town does business well and there's plenty of play as well. It is the 19th largest city in the country and largest in the state in both population and influence.


TO DO--If you're a NASCAR fan, there is no better place than the Charlotte area with Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord and many surrounding race shops of the various teams, as well as the nearly complete NASCAR museum and Hall of Fame. Charlotte is a very metropolitan and diverse city with plenty of shopping from the trendy shops and high fashion of SouthPark to the enormous Concord Mills with Bass Pro Shop near the Speedway. Discovery Place downtown is fun with kids under 10. The Charotte Bobcats of the NBA and Carolina Panthers of the NFL offer good pro sports options beyond the race cars, and there are even a couple minor league baseball teams in the area. Carowinds amusement park is just south of charlotte and if you are interested in American Christian History (I may have just made that up!) this is home to the former PTL, Inspiration Network, and also the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assoc....interesting stuff. If you're looking for nightlife, it's all in the city center/uptown area and it's pretty good, I'd start with BAR Charlotte and go from there.

TO EAT--For such a large and diverse city, the food is fairly un-inventive, but there are some good options. They do have all the major chains from Ruth's Chris and Morton's to McCormick and Schmick's and the Oceanaire. As you know, I'm looking for things I can't get anywhere else so I would go with Zink, Noble's, Blue, and Fig Tree are all very good and worth a trip. My favorite dish in the city is the Tchoupitoulas Chicken at Manzetti's Tavern in Southpark, I challenge anyone to offer me a better dish with chicken at the base, it is AMAZING. If you want to try some authentic Eastern NC BBQ, the best in town is at Bill Spoon's.

TO STAY--There is no shortage of nice hotels in the Uptown/Downtown/Center City of Charlotte. There is a very nice new Westin, a large Hilton, and a great smaller hotel...The Dunhill. If you want to be south, I'd recommend the Ballantyne Resort with great golf on sight. If you want to be on the north side, the place I stay most often when in the area, my favorite choice is the Embassy Suites in Concord which is less than two years old and has views of Concord Mills, Lowe's Motor Speedway, and a nice golf course! If you're looking for a romantic getaway, try the Morehead Inn or the Duke Mansion.

So there is where to start as you discover a great southern city. Of course you'll find places I have yet to discover...but isn't that half the fun!

Top 3--#3

I have always been a car fan and have recently started getting a little bit of an urge to buy a new (actually slightly used but new to me) car, I'm not gonna do it but I was able to gather some info that might be helpful for others looking. Of course the option of greatest interest these days is fuel economy so here are the three most fuel effiecient cars in america and I went ahead and found the most fuel effiecient luxury cars and convertibles too....

Top 3 most fuel effiecient cars for 2009 model year

3. Volkswagen Jetta Diesel, the wagon is also rated for the same fuel economy!

2. Honda Civic Hybrid, the regular fuel version is also a good choice and several thousand dollars cheaper.

1. Toyota Prius Hybrid, one of the first Hybrid in production is still the most effiecient on the road.

Honorable mention--MINI Cooper which also happens to be available in a three door and a convertible! Also, a great combination of economy and price is the Toyota Corolla.

Luxury

3. Acura TSX

2. Audi A4

1. Mercedes E320

Convertibles

3. Volkswagen EOS

2. Audi A4

1. MINI Cooper

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Smoke what you're selling"-- Jeff Kapusta, Pastor.

Poverty

I have been pushing this feeling to the back of my stomach for months, but it keeps coming back.

Why can I make a good living, have a nice house, two cars, two computers, three TVs, enough clothes to go a month without doing laundry, and anything I want to eat can be delivered within a few minutes??

At the same time, in my city, there are people who go hungry so their kids can eat, struggle to pay rent on their mobile home, and spend months looking for a job to pay their medical bills.

If I hop in one of the two cars we have we can drive to places where people spend their nights at the Rescue mission and their days collecting aluminum cans.
If I buy a plane ticket, within hours I can be in the middle of a village where shirts and shoes are a luxury and a hot meal is the stuff of legend. Why?

I have questioned this reality for too long. I realized today that things are this way because we have allowed it, even encouraged it with our greed and selfishness. It's time to change EVERYTHING...

It starts with the decision to create rather than consume, and build relationships rather than walls...it starts TODAY...

Action

I started this post several weeks ago and I was prompted to finish it after hearing two oddly similar church sermons last week here and here. They were both on vision and mission, but the common theme is that to do anything well, you need to continually remind yourself of why you are pursuing that goal and begin moving towards it.

I have a friend who REALLY wants to be successful, but has never made it happen...he keeps waiting for his ship to come in and thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. What I've realized is that anything worth doing is hard and takes continual effort and will probably not happen as quickly or in exactly the way that we would have designed.

The most important part of the equation of excellence is starting. You will always have reasons, and probably good ones, to avoid beginning any worthwhile endeavor. The difference between those who get it done and those who talk about it isn't capability or luck, it's action.

So I'm gonna end this post now and get started...

Top 3--#2

Well, since I opened the rap box with the first top 3, I decided to stay with it and do a related Top 3--

Top 3 rappers turned actors

The more I thought about this one the more I realized it was a LONG list, but upon closer examination, I was able to dump a BUNCH since playing yourself or a very similar person doesn't really qualify as acting (that's also why Vince Vaughn isn't an actor just a guy getting paid to be himself in front of a camera), so this cut eliminated Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and DMX among others....on with the count down

3. Queen Latifah
She has ended up being a better actress than she was rapper, and she wasn't a bad rapper!

2. Marky Mark--Mark Wahlberg
The Departed was great, and he stole the show...

1. Will Smith
When I first thought of this topic, he was the first person I thought of, he lost a few points for being a pretty awful rapper, but he is a world class actor and the biggest box office draw and goes easily from Ali to MIB to Pursuit of Happiness.

Honorable mention... goes to L.L. Cool J!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK!

You must be the change you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)

Prayers of the Saints

I spent the last couple days at Catalyst, which is a great conference, for work and got to hang out with a lot of cool people including the guys from the church my family attends. There were a lot of great speakers from Jim Collins to Dave Ramsey and Andy Stanley to Craig Groeschel.

The music was phenomenal and inspired me to by two turntables and a microphone!

I got a lot out of it and feel pumped and re-energized, but the wildest moment came on the ride home. On Thursday Craig Groeschel prayed that God would break our hearts for the things that break the heart of God and become "Ruined".

Driving home last night I was listening to some random music on the ipod, and after a top of the lungs ramble through Come on Eileen by Dexy's midnight runners, I came across one of my favorites from a couple years ago, it made me cry for the first time in years. It's from a worship album of old prayers put out by Trinity Vineyard in Atlanta, GA. The words are below and I pray they RUIN you!

Prayer of St. Francis

Make me an instrument of peace
where there is hate let me sow love
where there is hurt let me bring your healing
make me an instrument of peace
where there is fear let faith arise
where there is dark let me be your light
make of me your hands and feet
I want to be to the people around me
what you want to be to the people around me

its in the loving we find love
its in the giving we receive
its in the dying we are found

Top 3--#1

This is my attempt to bring more of a standardized approach to my blogging schedule, I will now be doing a weekly top three to go along with my city review and quote of the week, leaving room for just a couple random posts per week...



Speaking of random, I will start with a pretty random top 3---



TOP 3 Rap songs of the early 90's that aren't by MC HAMMER or VANILLA ICE



Of course we all remember Ice Ice Baby and U Can't touch This...but that's about where our memory ends for early nineties rap, so here is a little memory jogger



3. Baby Got Back, Sir-Mix-Alot--1992
The annoying melodic repetition is coming back to you already, I know.



2. O.P.P., Naughty by Nature--1991
This was the one that got things a little out of hand at the prom!



1. Nuthin but a G Thang, Dr. DRE--1992
The beginning of the Gangster rap goes mainstream era that started the whole coastal warfare





Honorable Mention---The Humpty Dance, Digital Underground--1990 and Insane in the Membrane, Cypress Hill--1993



P.S. Ace of Bass and LaBouche were disqualified for just being a guy speaking occasionally with techno in the background and a really loud woman mimicking whitney houston, you know you wanna be my lover...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"quote, I'm paraphrasing"--Joe Biden, 2008 Vice Presidential Debate