Archives

Monday, June 4, 2012

400-408 – Dan Rupple, has over 35 years in the entertainment industry and is the founder of Seriously Funny Entertainment (seriouslyfunny.tv) – he was a founding member with the pioneering sketch-comedy team Isaac Air Freight with 8 comedy albums and 1,200 concerts and TV appearances under his belt, then he spent over 10 years as a Supervising Producer for CBS Television (The Price Is Right, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Prime Time Emmys, Family Feud, etc.), and has been named the Honorary Chairman of the Christian Comedy Association.  He's also an ordained Foursquare minister, and he's on the Executive Advisory Board for the Biola Media Conference.  He and his wife Peggy have been married 34 years, and celebrate 3 married children and 4 grandkids.

• Dan's three keys for those who want to be in media:  1) Be passionate about your storytelling, 2) Learn your craft well, and 3) Know your audience – especially, the new "digital" audience.

• Today we talk about how the millennials will "do" church in the years ahead.  Dan thinks the Sunday sermon will be more closely tethered to the small group curriculum, including teases for the video they will be watching.  Pastoral staff will be expected to be far more accessible via Twitter and Skype.  Sermons will no longer be a series of performance-monologues, but rather, an ongoing interactive miniseries. 

413-423 – Dan Rupple

428-438 – Dan Rupple,

443-452 – Dan Rupple

458-508 – Steve Matthews, a cult apologist and researcher, has an article coming out soon with the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, exposing the real origin of Burning Man festival (burningman.com).  The traditional narrative is simply false.  In reality, the two founders, Larry Harvey and Jerry Jones, had a third founder named Michael "Flash" Hopkins.  Furthermore, the original "man" was a female named "Patricia" – named after Larry Harvey's wife, who was preventing him from seeing his son on his birthday, so in anger, Larry wanted to burn an effigy of Patricia on her front lawn.  His two friends, Flash and Jerry, talked him out of it, and instead suggested doing it down on Baker Beach in San Francisco, where Mary Grauberger was already famous for burning her art.  Being big fans of the 1970's cult classic The Wicker Man, they decided to build and burn the wooden Patricia effigy in Flash's girlfriend's basement and burn it on the beach.  This history has been heretofore entirely undisclosed in a public forum – until today, when Steve breaks it on my show.

• Wikipedia, "Burning Man".

Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.[1][2][3][4]

Burning Man is organized by Black Rock City, LLC. In 2010, 51,515 people attended Burning Man.[5] 2011 attendance was capped at 50,000 participants and the event sold out[6] on July 24. In April 2011, Larry Harvey announced that the Org had begun the process of transitioning management of the festival over to a new non-profit called the "Burning Man Project". //

• Steve Matthews (Spiritual Counterfeits Project, [pending]) 25 Years of Burning Man – Postmodern Pagan Paradigm for a New Society.

(3X) Michael "Flash" Hopkins tells the true story of the origin of the Burning Man back in 1986.  He was Larry Harvey's roommate, and Larry is acknowledged as the founder and director of Burning Man.  Flash is on the "Doing DaVinci" show on Discovery (dsc.discovery.com/tv/doing-davinci/bio/bio.html).

512-523 – Steve Matthews,

528-539 – Steve Matthews,

544-554 – Steve Matthews

558-608 – Bob Bowdon, founder of ChoiceMedia.tv, America's online hub for education news, exposing the scandal of America's high-cost, low-performing schools, while highlighting successes where they occur and pointing the way to a more hopeful tomorrow.  And, Director of the The Cartel DVD Documentary (thecartelmovie.com) – if you liked Waiting for Superman, you'll love The Cartel!

THE CRISIS | Only 35 percent of American high school seniors are proficient readers. Only 23 percent are proficient in math. Nationwide, only 74 percent of ninth graders graduate within four years—and that number drops to about 50 percent for black and Hispanic students. Twelve percent of American high schools are "dropout factories"—schools where less than 60 percent of freshmen even make it to their senior year. It comes as no surprise, then, that America lags far behind other developed countries when it comes to schooling: Among large industrialized countries, America ranks last in educational effectiveness—despite spending the most.

This costly, unconscionable failure forms the subject of The Cartel.

612-623 – Bob Bowdon. 

628-639 – (2X) • ABC News (6/1/2012) Inspirational Video: Students Cheer on Disabled Classmate in Race.

• Chris Lillstrung, News Herald (6/3/2012) One athlete's sportsmanship won't soon be forgotten.  Just like the scene in "Cars," when Lightning McQueen helps Strip "The King" Weathers" cross the finish line to retire with dignity and the crowd goes crazy.  Here's a YouTube video of it too (audio).

As I'm writing this, it's been nearly 24 hours since the end of the state track and field meet.

It was an honor to have three News-Herald area state champions, one more than last year, and so many area standouts reach the podium, many for the first time.

With all due respect to those significant accomplishments, though, this particular state meet may be remembered in sizable part for one athlete's incredible gesture, an athlete who resides nowhere near our area but deserves a wealth of praise.

The Division III girls 3,200-meter run was finishing up, with Hawken's Ally Markovich winning her first career state championship and the 25th all-time for the N-H area powerhouse program. Of the 15 athletes entered, 13 had finished. And then the crowd rose to its feet in unison for this incredible moment, captured by my colleague Theresa Audia: [Video].

The athlete on the left is Meghan Vogel of West Liberty Salem, a school located in west central Ohio about 50 miles northeast of Dayton. The athlete on the right is Arden McMath of Arlington, which is about 15 miles south of Findlay. With about 50 meters to go, McMath's legs buckled and it was clear she would be unable to finish. Vogel, who had earlier won the D-III 1,600, was running in last and saw what was playing out in front of her. She came up right next to McMath and, well, you see the rest. The crowd grew louder as they both crossed the finish line, with Vogel allowing McMath to finish ahead of her.

In 13 years of covering area high school sports for The News-Herald, it's no exaggeration to say it's easily one of the most inspiring and emotional moments I have ever seen in any sport at this level.

Around the state, many media outlets, including The News-Herald, mentioned this incredible moment in their coverage, with similar sentiments to those expressed here. Vogel commented on her generous act to the Springfield News-Sun, telling the newspaper, "Helping (McMath) across the finish line was a lot more satisfying than winning the state championship."

Meghan, likely speaking for anyone who was there and anyone who will hear about this moment in the coming days, you're a two-time state champion in 2012 as far as we're all concerned.

644-656 – • WSJ Editorial (6/3/2012) The Wisconsin Recall Stakes: A test of whether taxpayers can control the entitlement state.

• Mark Steyn (NRO, 6/2/2012) Twilight of the West.

• John Fund (NRO, 6/4/2012) If Walker Wins, What Are the Lessons? Wisconsin may be in play, labor is split, and voters are worked up.

• J. Spencer Fluhman (NYT, 6/3/2012) Why We Fear MormonsJ. Spencer Fluhman, an assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University, is the author of the forthcoming book " 'A Peculiar People': Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in 19th-Century America."