If you don’t care about the Christian music scene, you can stop reading right here if you want. If you do care but have no idea who Phil Wickham is, please continue. If you follow the link to his website, be prepared to be blasted with music as soon as you get there.
Phil is a worship leader/singer/songwriter who lives in San Diego. His self-titled debut album was released a year and a half ago. It was a solid offering – both in the musical and spiritual sense – and introduced the world to some great tunes. If you check out his self-titled disc, listen to Divine Romance. It’s a must hear.
I am generally of the opinion that it takes a solid two or three years between album releases for them to be any good. Any sooner and people start to get the feeling that the material isn’t any good. That isn’t the case with Cannons, Wickham’s sophomore album. His newest album is a must buy for your music library. Every song is good, thoughtful and leaves you wanting just one more verse. For those familiar with Christian music artists, Phil is a tenor along the lines of Kevin Maxx from DC Talk or Marc Martel from Downhere. As far as more ‘mainstream’ artists, I’d place him vocally in the company of John Ondrasik from Five For Fighting or Adam Levine from Maroon5. But, his rich lyrics and fantastic melodies place him in his own category altogether.
Here’s a link to a YouTube video of him singing Divine Romance from his first album. The new album dropped October 2nd, so there weren’t any good recordings of his newer material yet.
I’ll have to post on my favorite MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, another time. For now I’ll just say that Monday nights won’t be spent in Middle Earth singing my little heart out for a fellowship. Monday nights will be spent on the couch and the TV stuck on NBC for a few hours.
Having missed the premiere episode of Chuck last week (I think?), I picked it up pretty quickly. This is from the show’s website…
Chuck is a computer geek who is catapulted into a new career as the government’s most vital secret agent. When Chuck opens an e-mail subliminally encoded with government secrets, he unwittingly downloads an entire server of sensitive data into his brain. Now, the fate of the world lies in the unlikely hands of a guy who works at a Buy More Electronics store. Instead of fighting computer viruses, he must now confront assassins and international terrorists. With the government’s most precious secrets in Chuck’s head, Major John Casey of the National Security Agency (Adam Baldwin, “My Bodyguard”) assumes the responsibility of protecting him. His partner is the CIA’s top agent (and Chuck’s first date in years), Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strzechowski, “Gone”). They’ll try to keep him safe by trading in his pocket protector for a bulletproof vest. Also starring are Joshua Gomez (”Without a Trace”) as Morgan, Chuck’s best buddy, and Sarah Lancaster (”What About Brian?”) as Chuck’s ever-supportive sister, Ellie. Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak wrote, “Chuck,” which is produced by College Hill Pictures, Wonderland Sound and Vision, in association with Warner Bros. Television.
I found the show to be funny and entertaining. I don’t know that I’d drop everything I was doing to watch it if it weren’t on right before Heroes, but it’s conveniently placed in that time slot so I’ll probably continue to watch.
Heroes. I don’t know what to say about Heroes, other than it’s probably one of the best shows on television. If you don’t know what Heroes is all about by now, me typing about it won’t help.
Journeyman was pretty much done already in the late 80s. It was called Quantum Leap then and had a different cast. Yeah, it’s probably unfair to over-generalize Journeyman but there’s not much else there to the show than that. The acting is far from spectacular. And, in spite of the writer’s desire to create conflict, it falls short of the mark. Regardless of how shallow I find the show, it’s science-fiction and that’s good enough for me. Maybe NBC is counting on morons like me having the same attitude. My drooling, lobotomized demographic will probably carry the show for a few episodes, but I don’t see it having a huge following. I think they have 13 episodes in the can, but I’m not sure it’ll make it that far.
I’m listening to: Brian McNight – Never Felt This Way
It is being reported that Pamela Anderson and boyfriend, Rick Salomon were granted a marriage license over the weekend. Anderson was previously married to the upstanding citizens Kid Rock and Tommy Lee (not at the same time, but that wouldn’t surprise me).
Thanks to the article, I know who Rick Salomon is now. Though I’d be just fine not ever knowing. He’s the guy who released the sex tape with Paris Hilton. Salomon used to be married to Shannen Doherty.
Rumor has it, Julius Richard Petri will be invited to the ceremony.
Pam Anderson, Shannen Doherty, Paris Hilton, Kid Rock, Tommy Lee and Rick Salomon. That’s just a super-virus waiting to happen. Excuse me, I have to use some hand sanitizer after typing all of this out.
Ouch. It’s been a good six months since I posted anything substantive at TCMV. Some would argue that even when I was writing regularly I still wasn’t posting anything substantive.
Why did I stop writing? I’m not sure. This site is something I thought about all the time, even though I wasn’t taking the time to log in and post. News was still happening… is still happening. I just couldn’t seem to bring myself to focus on hard news and politics every day.
To be honest, it’s depressing! Look back over the last year in your mind. Scandal after scandal on both sides of the aisle, bribery, solicitation, hypocrisies galore. And no one seems willing to admit they were wrong. They always just point to the other guy and say, “But this doesn’t even compare to what they were doing over there.”
So, I think I’m done with the whole political focus. I’m sure I’ll post about something political here or there, but this web log won’t have 10 categories devoted to elements of politics. There may be one. When I decide I want to write something.
The blog is changing. Something you probably noticed right away was the new theme. I changed from the blog software b2evolution to WordPress. There is also a new, less serious theme.
Chocolaty goodness.
My nephew approves. Yummeh!
If you happen to drop by, say hello!
