On Collections...

I think my wife would agree with me when I say that I've colleceted far too many things in my life... Baseball cards, Comic books, Weapons (the martial arts kind), an absolutely absurd amount of DVDs, and of course the books that line the walls of my office...

As a musician and a lover of music, I have also of course accumulated quite a ridiculous number of CDs as well. Something I've been noticing lately is just how much of my music is actually film scores and soundtracks; particularly from 80's movies.

My latest acquisition is limited edition 2-disk score from "Masters of the Universe". I absolutely love it. Is Dolph Lundgren absolutey terrible in this film? Of course he is - it's one of those "so bad it's good" roles. Is the score a total rip-off of John Williams' "Star Wars" score? Of ccourse it is - which of course was a total rip off of Holst's "Planets"...

Nevertheless, listening to Bill Conti's work brings me a flood of old memories. He's good at that... Rocky, Karate Kid... all Bill Conti's work. What's scaring me now however is how much some of these rare out-of-print soundtracks go for... My wishlist includes the scores to "Ghostbusters" and "The Last Starfighter", which both regularly go for $75-$100 on ebay.

I previosly tried to save some money by downloading iTunes versions of some soundtracks... but all things considered, I'd rather have the physical CDs...

Cleveland

One of the benefits of being in ministry is how eager some people are to show you hospitality. Mike, Gary, Larry and I are staying in an absolutely beautiful home just outside of Cleveland for the 2009 Basics conference. Arriving here today was really the first relief I feel like we've experienced in about 24 hours.

Long story short: We were supposed to depart PDX Saturday night at 11:15pm. Upon arrival we were supprsied to find that the United counter was completely empty. There were no workers anywhere to be found. After some frantic phone calls, we discovered that our flight was cancelled. In February.

We finally contacted a supervisor who proceeded to try to tell us that we were sent emails (which we weren't). We were then told that we received a phone call (which we didn't). It honestly wouldn't be worth arguing except for the fact that they were completely unwilling to help us at all. We could have easily been on a Continental Air flight at 11:45, but United was completely unwilling. No vouchers. No hotel accomodations (remember: 11:15pm). The best they could (would) do was to put us on a flight departing at 6:15 am (by now it was almost midnight).

The inevitable occured as we left for home to all get 2.5 hours of sleep before leaving Beaverton again at 4:15am. I'm a little tired today. Once we arrived however, things started to get better. As i mentioned, we are staying in a beautiful home. We went to church tonight and the service was great. And now I'm about ready to go to bed.

The only remaining complexity is the fact that I seem to have left my cell phone in Portland. More on this to come...

Soli deo gloria