Lincoln: The Musical

I'm a little behind in my Lincoln in popular culture news. My favorite Lincoln blog shuttered in March, and I haven't found a superb one yet (though I also haven't had much time to look). But words cannot express my utter shock when I read the following headline this week:

Celebrating Lincoln's Bicentennial, Musical Abe Will Premiere in Illinois in 2009

To prove I'm not making this up, here's a link to the story, courtesy of Playbill.com.

But if words failed me when I read this theater story, my shock was complete after I foolishly conducted a simple Google search.

Here's result #1: www.abethemusical.com

And if you go to the site, you'll discover that it features the current draft of the script and sheet music to several of the songs, plus some links to audio demo files of the songs performed by the composer.

If you'd like, I'll save you the trouble -- it's absolutely AWFUL. And I don't just mean that it is historically inaccurate (so were the Pulitzer-Prize winning Abraham Lincoln in Illinois and the much-beloved John Ford film Young Mr. Lincoln at points). It's bad theater. The music is awful, poor lyrics coupled with fairly horrendous music -- and often about truly bizarre things.

Perhaps Act II is better, I didn't make it that far. If you want to know how bad it is, I simply suggest you open the script to Act I, Scene 4 and listen to the song "Corn" which is supposed to be a rousing ensemble bar song. The sheet music contains the priceless notation "a bit majestic," which of course describes the feeling of all of the great musical bar songs. And never mind the fact that the Rutledge Tavern, which our intrepid playwright and composer have branded a saloon, was more a restaurant than bar.

There is a possibility that in the hands of a specific director, who played the entire thing as farce, that it might be tolerable -- otherwise it's just best ignored.

New Book Reviews: Lincoln: The Presidential Archives and Shopgirl

I have been slow in writing and posting book reviews, but I've been playing catch-up and will post them a couple at a time until I've caught up.

The new reviews today are Lincoln: The Presidential Archives by Chuck Wills and Shopgirl by Steve Martin. The Lincoln book is mediocre and not really recommended; the Martin novel is lots of fun, but perhaps not quite as funny as people might expect.

Click here to see the reviews.

Meet My Niece

That's right! My niece has arrived. She's very cute, as you can see below. She's also very far away (4 states), which means I have not actually met her in person. But a trip is being planned to remedy that.

More importantly, there are pictures!

Here is Abigail Nicole. Underneath that hat she has wavy dark hair. I don't know whose hands those are, but that looks like my sister's watch.

Here's the proud father, my brother-in-law Erik. He was so excited that he made sure that this picture was one of the very first pictures he emailed out.

And here's the proud Mama, my sister Amanda.

Everyone is home and doing well. Abigail has a clean bill of health, and word is that the dog is already very protective of the baby. (Given that the dog is a Bichon, though, I'm not sure exactly what her protection would entail.)

Long Time, No Here

I've been busy on Fridays for a few weeks, including being out of the office for a couple of them, so I've neglected to update this blog for a while. My apologies for this.

Life goes on in West Virginia. Nothing terribly dramatic has happened, but I've been kept busy. On April 20, I was officially installed as the pastor here in Fairmont. It was a surprisingly large occasion (I don't really know what I was expecting), including some visitors for Illinois -- Rev. John Sowers and Rev. Howard Kennon and his wife Doris from Country Club Hills. It was a hectic and enjoyable weekend, with lots of conversation and food (of course).

The following week I spent three days in Huntington, WV for our church's Regional Assembly. It was an interesting assembly -- a much smaller event than in Illinois (pleasantly so). I certainly didn't know many people, but I met some more. Although it put me behind in some work back home, it was enjoyable and helpful.

With the warmer weather, I've taken the opportunity to play some golf. It's terrible -- there's a 9-hole course 2 minutes from my apartment; now I have no excuse to not play golf. Even the weather is less of a factor. But it's a good excuse to be outside. I'm trying to enjoy my surroundings -- golf, walking trails, etc. -- because it is really beautiful here and the weather has been gorgeous. This is all to justify my recent investment in such activities, which I took for a test drive earlier this week (I like 'em).

By the way, happy golf news -- and how often can you really have happy golf news. I got my first birdie on Tuesday. Putting from the fringe on a Par 3 (a sharply uphill Par 3), just trying to get it within a foot for a tap-in par (which also would have been cause for celebration). But it just rolled right in.

Church activities progress and keep me busy. The final spring Bible study on Romans started this week, with a much more involved discussion than I expected. I'm preparing for my summer sermon series on the Jewish Monarchy - Saul, David, Solomon, which will last for a still to be determined number of weeks, but which begins on May 18th. And so on.

More later....

Listen to Me!

Before you think that I've simply gone on a power trip, let me assure that the headline is an invitation, not a command. Per the requests of a couple of friends, I have found a way to post audio files of my sermons on this page. Perhaps you've seen the sermons on the sidebar. You can scroll through and access any sermon I've uploaded -- click on the sermon link, and *Voila!* the sermon will open in the audio player of your choice and begin playing. (How cool is technology sometimes!?) So for those of you who miss the lyrical sounds of my voice, or for those who simply need background noise while they surf the web, you can fill your need by clicking on a previous sermon.

Personally, I'm happy to post the sermons -- I've even posted them on my Pastor's Blog. Now I'm curious to see how attendance reacts. Many in the church have exclaimed that worship has become "an event" (in that they feel like they miss something if they're not there one Sunday). But I wonder if some drowsy people might start rolling over in bed on Sunday morning, figuring they can at least hear the sermon at their own convenience later in the week. At the very least, those who cannot avoid missing service seem thrilled to be able to listen to the sermons later.

Things are progressing here in Fairmont. Now that there's a hi-speed Internet connection in my office, I seem to spend more time there (coincidence?). Yes, I've been working out at the gym. I've also enjoyed some fine spring weather recently, including some 70 degree, sunny days this week. This means that I played my first round of golf this season. (For the record, I was terrible. Second worst round of golf I think I've ever played. To put it in perspective, Tiger Woods could stumble out of bed asleep, suffering from the flu, carry only a 7 Iron, offer to play 50% more holes than me, and still easily beat me. But at least it was beautiful outside -- and I made par on the 18th hole, which pretty much salvaged the whole experience.)

There's not much else going on. I've stepped up my movie viewing slightly, including a matinee of Leatherheads yesterday (pretty entertaining -- if I watched it again, I could probably recognize some more actors that George Clooney pays homage to by explicitly imitating their screen mannerisms: Clark Gable and, interestingly, Sean Connery). And I watched Children of Men this week, which was criminally overlooked at the 2007 Oscars -- it should have won Best Picture, which means that it certainly should have been nominated. But for some reason, the AMPAS doesn't ask my opinion on these things. Reviews should be forthcoming at Cinema Utopia.

I've discovered the magic of RSS feeds, which allows people to receive updates to certain web pages through an email-like program (or through Microsoft Outlook, I'm told). I've begun subscribing to such feeds through Google Reader, which I see will make my life so much simpler online (I can just subscribe to the pages I want to read everyday, and it will post any new updates to my Google Reader account -- which, happily, is BlackBerry friendly). I highly recommend this to others. And, if you're interested, you should know that I've created RSS feeds for my blogs, which means that you can simply subscribe to the feed and you'll never miss another post.

Lastly for this week, certain people have complained that there are not enough pictures on my blog. To my mind, this is a good thing, but I will try to occasionally post pictures.

photo

This is picture was taken on Easter of this year, following Easter dinner. A few interesting things: I am still awake, I am still wearing my suit, I am still welcome in someone else's house. To my mind, each of these qualifies as a minor miracle.

New Book Review: Hurricane Watch

Here is my latest review of Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth by Dr. Bob Sheets (former director of the National Hurricane Center) and Jack Williams (a weather reporter for USA Today).

3 1/2 stars.

Click here to go to the review.

New Book Review: Christmas in Harmony

Here is the latest review of a book I recently read, Philip Gulley's Christmas in Harmony, which is a short Christmas story in the wonderful Harmony series.

Click here to see the review.