Movie: "Michael Jackson This is It"

It's kinda interesting when you think about how the public perceives Michael Jackson now and how they did just before his death. He was scheduled to do a series of concerts in London, but when they were announced, it barely caused a ripple here. Even as they approached, you never heard much about them, or that MJ was in Los Angeles rehearsing. It seemed the concerts were a last ditch effort by him to either regain some of his stature as the King of Pop or to pay off the massive debts he had. Michael had become nothing more than a tabloid sensation, with ever increasingly bizarre behavior, and he hadn't performed in almost 10 years. After he died suddenly in June, interest did grow about these concerts he was preparing for, and then it was found out lots of rehearsal footage existed, which was made into the documentary I went and saw tonight.

Based on what I saw, I would have to say that Michael was poised to make a phenomenal comeback. He wasn't just planning a concert, but it was a massive stage production complete with 3D special effects, filmed sequences, and much more. He assembled an impressive line-up of dancers and musicians (my favorite being female guitarist Orianthi Panagaris, but the other lead guitarist, a male, ain't no slouch, either).

I guess what most people will wonder when they first go to see this is, how does he look? Well, he is very skinny, but other than that, he seems just fine. He's very courteous to his fellow performers and crew, makes his intentions clear without being a spoiled prima dona. Can he still dance? Oh yeah, he still has the moves, amazingly so. He never seems distant or detached, just his usual calm, reserved self that I remember from his 80's heyday.

The rehearsal footage assembled is pretty amazing. You see many songs performed close to how they would have been performed in the actual concert. The sound is very good, it doesn't have the feel of raw footage being shot by a handheld camera. The dancing is wonderful, and all the instrumentalists are great (and Michael isn't selfish, he allows them to be spotlighted). Also, they just seemed to be having a blast! This would have been one fun concert to be a part of. I don't think anyone was expecting this from Michael at age 50. He wasn't just going to phone in his performance, he was truly giving it his all, and it shows in the rehearsals.

You don't have to be a big MJ fan to enjoy this. I don't know how much fans were paying for the London concerts, but they were going to get their money's worth. Would Michael truly have ended his career after the London concerts? I don't know. After word got out how great they were, I think there would have been a huge demand for a worldwide tour. Based on what I saw in this documentary, I would loved to have seen the final, polished product (but what you see is still very impressive). This is only playing in theatres for two weeks, so go quickly, you won't be disappointed.

Clever Students

I teach a freshman-level college skills course at IU South Bend. This past week, we spent time in class preparing for an exam they were to take. I divided everyone into small groups to review the different test strategies and how to memorize the material. The test was over a chapter from the textbook. One of the strategies was taking random information and organizing in a way that would be easy to remember. For example, taking a list of 6 terms and making a sentence out of the first letter of each term.

For this example, the first letter of each term they were trying to memorize was E, L, D, H, C, W. Below is the sentence they came up with using these letters:

Every
Losing
Domer
Hates
Charlie
Weiss

I thought that was pretty good.

Dodgers v. Phillies

Watching the Phillies play the Dodgers in Los Angeles brings back memories of when I was at my peak of baseball fandom (my interest now only somewhat perks up during the playoffs). Back in the late 70's, the Phillies and Dodgers met several times in the National League playoffs. At the time, we lived in California and each year we made a trek down to Dodger Stadium. The first game we ever went to? Yep, Dodgers and Phillies during the regular season.

Dodger Stadium is not located in the heart of Los Angeles. You exit the freeway and go up this hill to get to it. You kinda wonder where this thing is at, then suddenly you come up over the hill and the sky blue stadium sits in the middle of a massive parking lot (which, by the way, is a zoo getting out of).

We usually went down 1 - 2 times a year. Ironically, I was never a Dodger fan. In fact, I rooted against them big time. I grew up a Cincinnati Reds fan, this during the era of Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, and Pete Rose. So, we often went to see the Reds when they came to town. But, despite my interest in seeing them lose, the Dodgers were an enjoyable team to watch during the late 70's and early 80's. For one, this was when teams stayed together a long time and they had a remarkable team with players like Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, and many others, including Mike Sciosia, who's now coaching the cross-town rival Angels.

The first game I went to featured home runs by Greg Luzinski and Mike Schmidt of the Phillies. For the Dodgers, Rick Monday hit one and a grand slam was hit by none other than Dusty Baker, now a successful coach in the major leagues. Yeah, not quite sure why I remember who hit home runs for an early season game over 30 years ago, but maybe since it was my first trip to a major league game, that made it memorable. It was also memorable in that we were delayed in traffic several hours getting there (traffic accident on the mountain pass) and delayed again on our return trip (another traffic accident on the mountain pass). Not sure if she sang it at the first game I went to, but I remember multiple times Toni Tenille singing the national anthem (you know, as in Captain and . . .

Dodger Stadium is quite old now, and I think it's the oldest next to Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. I've been to several stadiums in my lifetime, but this one is still the best. Plus, it also has the best hot dogs of any ballpark . . .Dodger Dogs!

Returning to Bible Quizzing

Anna is on the quiz team at Trinity Evangelical Free Church in South Bend. Dorene and I used to be quiz coaches there and it's been fun returning but this time in the supportive parent role. We're not switching churches, just having Anna join their quiz team as a free agent. Kinda cool in that two of our former quizzers are now the coaches.

Anna had her first quiz last weekend in Peoria, Illinois. We weren't sure how she'd do because quizzing puts you in the spotlight and you also get told "wrong" several times. This didn't faze Anna a bit. She stepped it up and kinda surprised us. She finished in the top 10, which is quite good for her first quiz meet.

Even better is that quizzing is divided up into two divisions, upper and lower. As a 5th grader, Anna is on the lower division. However, there weren't enough teams quizzing in the lower division, so they combined everything so the lower teams (typically first-year teams) quizzed against the experienced teams with high school juniors and seniors. Anna held her own and outjumped many of the older, much more experienced quizzers. Can you say, YES!!

Cameron has played soccer, basketball, baseball and gymnastics. Anna has not really had anything to call her own. But she called Grandma Dennie after the quiz and told her, "I finally found my sport."

Not to brag on her or anything, but watch out, she's gonna be a good quizzer and comes from good quizzing pedigree. Both my brothers quizzed as did all my nephews and niece (whom I told practiced with laminated note cards in the shower). Myself, we didn't have a quiz team at our small church in Pixley, California, so I never got to quiz. But if we had, I'm sure a team that had me and Jeff Prine would have been unstoppable.

A Nobel Peace Prize for Obama?

Any Republican that questions this is going to be called a right-wing nut that can't accept the fact that Obama is President. But wait just a minute here. Does he really deserve this award NOW? I mean, what has he really done after just a year? I perfectly accept Obama as being President, he won handily, but this award kinda puzzles me.

When I think Nobel Peace Prize, I think of past winners like Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Gorbachev, and Jimmy Carter. Usually the award is given as more of a lifetime achievement or for some truly monumental efforts at peace (like Walesa and Gorbachev). Oftentimes it goes to someone you've never heard of, but who has done something extraordinary.

I just don't see Obama deserving this just yet. His "war of necessity" in Afghanistan has gone quickly downhill in his year in office with last August being the deadliest month yet for our troops (we lost 48, but no one seemed to notice). Iraq has stabilized, mainly due to the troop surge he was against. Not saying Obama would never deserve the award . . .but not yet.

Is this making up for the sketch on SNL last weekend which mocked him as a do-nothing President?

Allison Diane Dennie @1

My baby girl turned one today!

Bring Home the Games, Obama

For some reason, Obama is getting some heat for lobbying on behalf of Chicago for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Not sure why this could be a bad thing. I think it would be great if Chicago were awarded the games. If ever I was going to have an opportunity to see an Olympics in person, this would be it. In fact, I'm not positive, but South Bend could possibly be a site because of our artificial white water course (which has been used before in Olympic trials). If anything, I think it would be cool to see the torch relay come nearby and to go see that.

A few years ago, Paris was the frontrunner for the 2012 games but was upset by London. A lot of the credit was given to Tony Blair for his lobbying on behalf of that city. So, if Obama can bring the games to us in 2016, more power to him.

However, I'm thinking that Rio de Janeiro is going to get the games. South America has never been awarded an Olympics and recent history has the U.S. doing pretty good securing the games with Lake Placid (1980); Los Angeles (1984); Atlanta (1996); and Salt Lake City (2002). The other cities in the running are Madrid and Tokyo. I would think Madrid would be a long shot since Barcelona just had them recently. Tokyo would probably be the long-shot upset if they won.