Biff's Question Song (Stand-up Comedy)

I learned about this song a week ago and I still can't get it out of my head.

My Name is Earl, Rudy

Earl isn't one of those shows I go out of my way to get to, but if it's on, I'll partake. I'm glad I watched last night. It was on for something like 33 minutes and 28 seconds, or some kind of funky time like that NBC tends to use from time to time.

Jist of the episode: Earl is working on the loading dock of an appliance store when he decides he wants to work up front in sales. Neither the guys working on the docks -- the "Dockers" -- and the ones working in sales -- the "Dickies -- like that he's trying to make the switch. The head boss says if Earl can sell $5,000 of stuff by the end of the week he can stay in sales.

Both groups do whatever they can to make sure Earl doesn't succeed. When it seems like Earl is about to give up, the scene happens.

Charles Dutton comes in and says, "So you didn't sell $5,000 worth. Big deal. There are bigger tragedies in life."
I realized then that they were going to do the same scene from Rudy. All of a sudden I realized how it wasn't a coincidence that Dutton, Sean Astin, and the guy who played Notre Dame head coach Dan Devine in the movie were all in this particular episode of Earl. Dutton does his whole spiel and then to top it off all the Dockers come into the boss's office -- played by the same guy who played Dan Devine -- and lay down their credit cards to buy enough items for Earl to get the promotion.

I was having to laugh at this inwardly while holding a sleeping baby. Loved it.

For a look at how Hollywood tends to dramatize things, check out the final play of that ND/Georgia Tech game from the movie and then in real life.

Ware County Wildfire

I just filed a story on Sweat Memorial Baptist Church in Waycross and its providing a temporary location for students and teachers from Ruskin Elementary School. Ruskin is dangerously close to the fire and will not be usable for days. This video gives an erie sense of what it's like to drive through the area.

Calling audibles

It's rare that an issue of The Index goes from the start of the production cycle to the end of it looking the same. Months in advance we plan for particular feature stories/series to go in or prepare for stories that relate to that time of the year, such as Easter.

I was working on the first installment of the mental health series in preparation for the March 15 issue when we realized that Easter was coming earlier this year. Joe, our managing editor, is working on a story for that issue (March 29) about a former Satanist. Each year during spring training we run a story about Christians on the Braves. This year, Dr. Harris interviewed a fairly well-known one and wrote about his testimony. That story will be in our upcoming issue.

Something else being held is a story about a member of First Baptist Quitman who died in church but was then brought back to life. We thought it would go better with the Easter issue, for obvious reasons.

Upcoming series: Pastors and mental health

This topic is one I've thought the church has needed to address for some time. The stress pastors come under is intense, and the fishbowl they and their families live in is a situation the average churchgoer has no concept of.

We've all heard stories about a minister who lost his temper and didn't handle a situation tactfully, to say the least. At times these events don't just happen due to the stress, but because there is something wrong psychologically that needs to be addressed by a professional. We live in a world where there are more pastors being diagnosed as bipolar or with clinical depression. How is the body of Christ responding to those needing help for a wound that doesn't appear on the outside?

The Index is about to run a three-part series looking at this. I'm working on the first two parts while another writer is taking care of the third installment. My first story is going to be about a pastor who was dealing with these issues and even handed his resignation in to his church ... only to see the church reject his resignation. They stayed with him. Today, 15 years later, he's still there and the ministry has grown.

Remembers those lost in Honduras

Our current issue was a tough one to get out. First of all, it was centered around the deaths of three missionaries in Honduras. Two of them attended Tabernacle Baptist Church in Cartersville. In talking to the people there I saw how these two guys, Ric Mason and Perry Goad (Perry's on the left and Ric on the right), were not the type of church members to do nothing but keep a pew warm. They got out there. They were involved. They got their hands dirty.

Perry had his own heating and air conditioning business, a venture that I learned he treated as an extension of ministry in itself. His technical skills helped the church through the television ministry – a position that isn't very noticeable until you either mess up ... or you're not there. On the Sunday after his death pastor Don Hattaway said that after services Perry would have to chase him throughout the halls of the church to pass off the DVD of that day's service so Hattaway's parents could have a copy of their son preaching ASAP.

Ric had been known in Cartersville for years as owning a couple of eating joints, the last one being The Meating Place until he sold it. In addition to his work at Tabernacle, though, he was also the executive director for The Etowah Foundation, a group that provides grant money for students to go to college. Everyone seemed to have a memory of him and how he encouraged them to be involved in missions.

The most tragic thing about the loss of these two men is that they were solid family guys – the kind that you don't hear that much about. Service comes with a price, though we often don't equate that price with our lives. I never met either one of them, but every time the world loses men like these who are willing to set the bar a little bit higher, we all feel it.

When we're wrong ...

In putting together the paper, I basically read over each page at least twice and usually more than that. In that process, your eyes can play tricks on you and mistakes that are there are simply missed. It happens. When we get the finished product from the printer every other Tuesday I have a gnawing feeling in my gut because whatever is in there, is in there. Nothing you can do about it.

That being said, the San Francisco Chronicle has come up with an interesting way for readers to inform Chronicle staff of mistakes called Correct Me If I'm Wrong ... Their first one is an instant classic and will leave you hearing the phrase "pilotless drone" all day. I was crying at the end of it. Listen to it here. Warning: the poor guy on the phone is so irate he uses slang for "tee-tee."

To read what Poynter had to say about it, click here.

Being sure about safety on missions

I've been on a few mission trips, but none in a long time and never overseas. If I were to go, I'd probably think of some of the worst scenarios I could find myself in while overseas. The story I heard from Mark Harrison, pastor of Cumming Baptist Church, confirmed one of those scenarios. It also got me thinking about some basic stuff people should think about doing before heading off overseas on missions.
Last fall Mark and a group from First Baptist Cumming were teaching English at a school in Thailand. Late one night the missionary they were helping out came to their hotel room and told them to turn on the TV. That was how they learned that the country had been taken over by the military.
Interesting enough, the missionary who told them, Rick Kuter, is from Georgia. He learned from his son, who was working in Alpharetta. A co-worker knew his parents were in Thailand and asked him if he had heard about the government being taken over. He hadn't and after seeing it on TV called his parents halfway around the world to let them in on it.
I originally had that in the published story, but because of space restrictions I had to take it out. I also just couldn't find the right place to insert it.
Another element on this I wish I could've included had to do with a member of the team who had a hard time dealing with the uncertainty of the situation. He's retired from a successful business, but just couldn't stop shaking or pull it together for awhile after hearing of the coup. Scary situation. You have no idea how the military could view Americans, especially in this day. He told his teammates later that the experience just made him realize how he was somewhere that his money couldn't get him out and he was totally dependent upon God.
In order to get some more pictures, I did a search on Flickr for photos of the coup and found some good ones. Before contacting the photographers, though, I realized there could be problems with using them. We, of course, give photo credits for pictures we use. More than likely the credit would have been the Flickr sites of the individual. I think we were under deadline at the time, otherwise I might would've checked anyway. However, I didn't want us to be linked to someone and then if a reader went to that page (since we cited it) they might see images that we wouldn't want associated with The Index. It's an avenue I still might explore someday.

Small church burns, then rebuilds

I truly can't think of why anyone would want to burn a church. It doesn't seem there are too many things worse you could do to get on the bad side of the Almighty. When a tragedy like this happens, though, sometimes it can end up being a positive.
Emit Grove is a small rural church near Statesboro in the southeastern part of the state. It sits adjacent to some cotton fields off a county road. When it burned, a lot of history and sentiment went up with the flames. When I wrote the article for the paper I didn't want to sugar-coat too badly the fact that people were angry. Although there is grace and forgiveness extended to the guy who did it, people were ticked. I know I would've been.
It's cool too see that the church is rebounding though. The new family life center has become more than what it was originally supposed to be. This is opening doors for the congregation in the community.
The only thing I regret about running this story is that we couldn't use the picture bigger. We didn't want to wait another issue, and ads had eaten up our other color space. Too bad. The lady who took this, not a professional photographer, did a really good job with it.