Spring break

There are only a couple of more days left of my spring break, so I thought I’d post on what I’ve been doing. If nothing else, it explains my absense from blogging for the past few days.

Recording: I’ve spent some time with Eric in the studio working on my CD. We’ve accomplished a lot, including writing and recording a new song called “98 Miles”.

Disc golf: The ultimate spring/summer/fall pastime. So far I’ve played 27 holes, and I am playing later today, too.

Movies: I saw V for Vendetta and Inside Man which were both awesome. V for Vendetta was more awesome, though. Fantastic film. Made me want to write a paper about it… I’m so lame.

Lion King: I saw the broadway production of The Lion King last night. It was a Christmas gift from my mom, and it too was awesome.

Old school movie: I watched one of my all-time favorite movies, The Cutting Edge. I saw a preview for a new version (The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold) of the classic on TV and it inspired me to watch the 1992 version. I think I’ve just always had a thing for Moira Kelly.

Church: I gave the Sunday school lesson for the Sr. High at Valley Church last weekend and hung out with the students later that night.

Cubs preseason: I was able to watch a Chicago Cubs preseason game and I am getting super pumped for opening day next Monday. Go Cubbies!

Basketball: Of course, I’ve watched the NCAA tournament games and will watch the ones this weekend. My bracket is far gone, so I’m rooting for George Mason.

That’s all for now. I’m off to a dentist appointment.

Soundtrack to my life

If my life had a soundtrack, what songs would it be comprised of? Here’s my attempt:

Opening credits: “Pin Your Wings” by Copeland
Waking up: “Seven-Eighty” by This Day & Age
Average day: “Bigger Than My Body” by John Mayer
First date: “Crush” by Gavin DeGraw
Falling in love: “On a Night Like This” by Dave Barnes
Love scene: “U Know What’s Up” by Donell Jones
Fight scene: “Never Take Friendship Personal” by Anberlin
Breaking up: “I’m Sorry, Mary” by Matt Wertz or “Not Coming Home” by Maroon 5
Secret love: “Secret” by Maroon 5
Life is good: “Feeling Good” by Michael Bublé or “Everything’s Right” by Matt Wertz
Mental breakdown: “C#” by Dropping Daylight
Driving: “I-35″ by Paul Christianson
Learning a lesson: “Glósóli” by Sigur Rós
Deep thought: “Black Balloon” by the Goo Goo Dolls
Flashback: “83″ by John Mayer
Revelation: “A Skeleton of Something More” by Sleeping at Last
Partying: “Pump It” by Black Eyed Peas
Pure joy: “Mariposa” by Wideawake
The chase/mission: “Name of the Game” by the Crystal Method
Regret: “Shallow” by the Gabe Dixon Band
Spiritual reverence: “Cathedrals” by Jump, Little Children
The night drive: “Covered In Rain” by John Mayer
Long night alone: “La Cienga Just Smiled” by Ryan Adams or “Crush” by Dave Matthews Band
Death scene: “Forever” by Vertical Horizon
Closing credits: “Someday” by Embrace

I tried to limit song choices to two at most. There are a few categories for which I would like to have had upwards of ten or more songs, but that’s not the case with real soundtracks. Additionaly, there were several songs I chose in reverse order, that is, I picked the song first and then tried to fit it into a category because I like the song. There are just some songs that I think should be on there even if they don’t really have a category. Anyway, that’s enough analysis. I might come back to it later.

After compiling this list, I decided to make an iTunes playlist called “Life Soundtrack” and it’s awesome.

Nickel Creek

Nickel Creek, a bluegrass/folk/acoustic trio, performed at Luther last night and they were incredible. Each individual member of the group is an incredible musician but the mandolinist, Chris Thile, clearly sticks out as the most proficient.

Click here for more photos from the show.

They performed several covers - some bluegrass and some pop - including Randy Newman’s “Short People” and an ironically musically solid rendition of Britney Spears’ “Toxic”. The set included songs off of their new album like “Doubting Thomas” and “Can’t Complain”, the latter of which was one of my favorite tunes of the evening.

Older songs made apperances as well, such as “The Fox” and “When You Come Back Down” and a couple of really old ones, too. After one of the really old ones, Sara said “That song was about coffee… could you tell?” referencing the song Old Cold Coffee on the Dashboard from their 1997 release “Here to There.”

I was fortunate enough to have a front-row seat and took more than a hundred pictures, the best of which I uploaded to my flickr photostream for your viewing pleasure.

Smoke and Mirrors

I am working on a new song for the album[1] called “Smoke and Mirrors”. I’ve been pretty busy as of late and haven’t had much time to do any songwriting, but this one has been coming to me in bursts. I recorded a small part of it (the chorus) and you can listen to it on my Myspace page. Here are the lyrics for the chorus:

it’s all smoke and mirrors
distracting from the real thing
and i’ve been perfecting the illusion for years
performing for a crowd ten thousand wide
it’s all smoke and mirrors

Let me know what you think!

[1] It should be finished by summertime.

Purpose driven youth ministry

During my internship last summer at Valley Church, I was introduced to a specific method of youth ministry known as Purpose Driven Youth Ministry (PDYM). The pastor of student ministries at Valley, Brandon Barker, has been using the PDYM method for several years and was recently interviewed for an article at Pastors.com.

Even in the short amount of time I was there (ca. 3 months), it was easy to see the effectiveness of PDYM, the way that students really felt committed to the ministry and to the Kingdom. I’ve always felt iffy about the Purpose Driven Life (a quick visit to the website will give you nice warm fuzzy), but PDYM is different; it’s tangible. I’m looking forward to being a part of Valley’s student ministry again this summer.

JakeBouma.com’s first birthday

One year ago today, under the encouragement of Andrew, I purchased JakeBouma.com for about $9. I recently extended my ownership of the domain until March 18, 2007. So what does this mean for you?

Well, according to the acronymistically-gifted DHHSCDC (Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), between the ages of one and two JakeBouma.com “will show greater independence, begin to show defiant behavior, recognize himself in pictures or a mirror, and imitate the behavior of others, especially adults and older children.”

The site has been through several design changes in its first year of life, and will hopefully continue to improve in the next year. If you don’t remember, at one point I accidentally deleted the whole thing… but that won’t happen again.

If you’d like to support the site and/or celebrate its first birthday, perhaps a selection from my wishlist would do (Edit: the wishlist link has been fixed). Thanks to everyone who visits regularly and even those who don’t. You all make having this website worthwhile; music is only beautiful if it is heard.

But seriously, be on the lookout for “defiant behavior”.

A postmodern canon

can·on (noun): a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works. [the canon of great literature]

Precipice Magazine, an “online Christian resource for dialogue, interaction and opinion about… the postmodern era; as well as the subsequent rise of the emergent church,” is publishing a list of books to include in a ‘postmodern canon’ (one page says it will be 50 books, another says 40). They just published Part 4 of the series, which contains books 16-20.

I’ve read at least one book in each of the four sections so far. Those books are Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, and God’s Politics by Jim Wallis.

I really want to read a few of the books on that list, like Stanley Grenz’s A Primer on Postmodernism (I added it to my wishlist a few days ago), but I’ve got a lot more reading to do first.

Let the madness begin

It’s one of my favorite times of year: March Madness. Before writing this post, I thought I’d look back and see what last year’s post looked like, and it’s pretty much the same.

More or less, I need to make three points:

• I love college basketball with all of my heart.
• Last year I got 2nd place out of 19 in my school pool. This year there are 24 entrants. I also joined a pool with people from Valley Church.
• My bracket can be found here.

I gotta go watch basketball.

So many books…

When I was younger, my mom bought a shirt at the Mall of America that says “So many books… so little time.” For her, it has always been true. In her room is a constantly rotating stack of books waiting to be read. I didn’t really start reading books until I got to college - thanks to Harry Potter - and now I have fallen victim to the same clever phrase.

See the original, full-sized photo here.

A couple of the books are ones that I am required to read for class but I would read on my own anyway, and the others are ones that I want to read soon. Click here for a bigger picture and details on all of the books listed. I am in the middle of reading “To Own a Dragon,” the third one from the top.

Loose ends

It took me a while, but I finally fixed one of the big visual problems plaguing my site. The comment section. I wasn’t pleased with the way it looked in the new layout, so last night I totally redesigned it. In addition, I created a new header image, which is a picture taken while drving to Luther on Interstate-35 North. Looks like spring is not so far away.

Another thing: I was going to post this a few days ago, but I forgot. I was mentioned in an article in Luther’s weekly newspaper, Chips. You can read it here (don’t mind the huge, atrocious picture of me in the middle).

Tony Jones forum follow-up

Being home, attending Valley Church and its new(ish) college ministry, and conversing with/ listening to Tony Jones was amazing.

Sunday night, he spoke to the church’s high school group about humanizing versus objectifying people.

Monday, however, was where it was at. Tony spoke to and fielded questions from a small group of area youth pastors and volunteers for nearly three hours on Monday morning. Topics ranged from Tony’s life story to postmodernity to theology of the cross to the emerging church to methodology (how to “do” youth ministry).

There’s really no way I could sum up everything here, but I did take notes (unfortunately, the conversation was not recorded). If you’re up to trying to decipher my notes, you can download them here (in Rich Text Format). Some of it probably won’t make sense out of context, and if I had more time on my hands, I would annotate the notes but that’s just not an option at the moment.

Thanks to Brandon Barker for having the courage to invite Tony into your house and church, and thanks to Tony Jones for having the courage to rethink important Christian issues and talk openly about them.

Tony Jones

I am in Des Moines today and tomorrow. I came home to attend a mini-conference (edit: at Valley Church… no, I’m not embarassed) led by Tony Jones, the newly appointed National Coordinator for Emergent-US. Tony has penned five books to date, including Postmodern Youth Ministry and The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life.

Tonight he is speaking to my youth group, and tomorrow morning he is leading a forum for youth pastors and workers. I plan on taking notes and (maybe) posting them here when I get back.

Blast from the past

In keeping with posting about things from my past, here are some pictures from way too long ago that I recently came upon.

See the original, full-sized photo here.

That’s me at about age five. My shirt says “It’s better in the Bahamas,” and it’s a souvenir my parents brought back from their vacation to the Bahamas. I’ll bet you can buy the exact shirt or something very similar at one of those trendy t-shirt stores. Apparently the person taking the picture was falling down at the time.

See the original, full-sized photo here.

I am very excited about Christmas. And sweatsuits. I am guessing this is age seven or eight. Interesting fact: I had the chair in the left part of the picture in my freshman dorm room. Late that year it literally fell apart, but it logged an admirable amount of years of reclining pleasure.

See the original, full-sized photo here.

It is obvious in this picture that a few years later I would listen to boy bands. I am holding my cat, Pepper, and wearing a little league sweatshirt. Probably twelve years old. Before puberty, my hair was blonde and straight, and I loved it when it was that long because I could jerk my head to the side to “get the hair out of my eyes”. And that was cool.

Comments welcome.

The Quiet Table

[The following is a non-fiction account of an experience from my past. Take the time to read it; you won’t regret it.]

There are some things that I have surely forgotten about elementary school. One thing that I will not forget, however, is the Quiet Table.

In the elementary school penal system, the Quiet Table was located just above a Time-Out and just below a detention. If someone was punished to sit at the Quiet Table, a clever acronym was used: Q.T. Thus, it was said that you “got a Q.T.”. Believe me, you didn’t want a Q.T. Why? Because the Q.T. was a table in the far corner of the lunchroom, and the rules said you had to get your lunch, sit down, and eat at the Q.T. all without saying a single word. Hence the name.

You also had to miss recess, all the while wallowing in your own self-pity and silence. There was usually at least one kid sitting at the Q.T., sometimes more, and there was always a teacher. The Q.T. teacher’s job was was fairly simple: make sure the inmates don’t speak. The teacher also made sure the kids didn’t turn around, because in addition to eating in silence, they were condemned to facing the wall. You weren’t allowed to see anyone at the Q.T., but everyone could see you. This was always a hot topic of conversation at the regular lunch tables. “Who’s at the Q.T. today?” “It looks like Lance.” “Again.”

Another thing that sucked about the Q.T. was the paperwork. After you finished your miserable, friend-less lunch, you were required to fill out (with the help of the teacher) a mustard-yellow sheet detailing why you ended up at the Q.T. This sheet was to be taken home, signed by a parent, and brought back to school. The sheet had questions like “What behavior led to the student receiving a Q.T.?” and “What will the student do to change this behavior?” and “How can we improve your stay at the Q.T.?” Okay, that last one wasn’t there, but if it had, I would have vehemently lobbied for a la carte reinstatement.

In addition to having you verbal communication privileges revoked, you weren’t allowed a second helping of whatever was on that day’s lunch menu. A la carte = second helping. You had to raise your hand just after the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning so that that lunch room could amply prepare for your gluttonous indulgence. Getting a Q.T. on chicken nugget day or pizza day was equatable to pooping your pants in class. It was to be avoided at all costs.

If you receieved 3 Q.T.s — God forbid — it meant that you had earned some special award, like spending the entire day with the principal. The principal, Mr. Hart, was a man of at least 100 years of age who worked at McDonald’s on the weekends. I’m not sure if he knew that this undermined his authority or not. I mean, two days ago, he was dropping hashbrowns (he worked mornings) and taking my order, and today he expects me to treat him as my superior? Well, I probably did obey, because 3 Q.T.s was a serious offense, and who knew what punishment came after spending a day with Principal McMuffin.

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