100 Things

100 Things.

I’m stealing this from my buddy Ike who did this on his blog. Here are 100 things about me in no particular order. They are not the 100 most important or most interesting or most any other category. Just 100 things.

1. I believe the sandwich is nature’s perfect food

2. If I had half the charm of my youngest son or half the negotiating skills of my oldest, I would never lose another case

3. I hate the automatic, sensor driven faucets and soap and paper-towel dispensers. Mostly they just leave me standing in the bathroom waiving my hands like an idiot with nothing else happening. I prefer the days when we just got germs all over us and didn’t know it. The only thing worse are those real fabric towel loops. I’m sorry, but I’m not touching that.

4. Sometimes when I sit in my recliner with a football game on and chips, dip and diet Pepsi nearby on a Sunday afternoon I actually believe I am going to be bathed in light and hear angels singing in the background.

5. The Godfather trilogy is the best movie ever made. Citizen Kane is no longer even in the top 10. Come on people, get over it already.

6. My wife’s senior picture from high-school looks like it could be a current picture and I secretly am concerned that she may be a highly skilled, sword wielding immortal like from the Highlander movies and TV show.

7. Seinfeld is the best sitcom ever made, but Arrested Development is not far off.

8. I have almost everything I knew to want as a younger man.

9. I have learned more about Christianity from Kierkegaard than anyone who has written since he was alive

10. I have learned more about Christianity from my Mom and Dad than from Kierkegaard.

11. Right now I have no desire whatsoever to have pets.

12. I would rather be over than under dressed

13. Though limited skills and talent and the passage of time make it increasingly ridiculous, when I’m on a basketball court I believe that every shot I take is going in.

14. If I could change any physical feature of mine, other than those I can change like my weight, muscle tone, etc, I would not change a single thing in spite of the fact that I am not very physically attractive

15. I was elected President of the Black Student Union in college

16. I believe people are terrible judges of what makes them happy

17. I believe the tolerance of “minor” cheating in sports, like grabbing someone’s jersey when the ref isn’t looking is a major contributor to the cheating we care about like steroids.

18. I believe “creation” is not the opposite of “evolution” and I have never heard a compelling argument against either.

19. I would always rather have extra fries than desert

20. When you order wine or beer I will order Pepsi (even in a nice restaurant) and even though you will look at me like I am a child, I will not be ashamed

21. I believe yelling at players, coaches and refs through my television can affect the outcome of the game.

22. You can never have too many watches…or sneakers…or hats….or sunglasses

23. I believe the government is incapable of defining for me or anyone else what is marriage or a family

24. I would play basketball for 5 hours a day every day if I could

25. I recently came to understand that becoming a better father will mean changing who I am more than what I do

26. My favorite color is baby blue

27. For pure talent in pop music I believe there is The Beatles, Paul Simon, Prince and then everybody else.

28. Writing songs of worship has become one of the most important parts of my relationship with God.

29. I believe the reason I have never been good at math has more to do with a failure to understand why I should be than a natural inability to be.

30. I tear up 2 out of every 3 times I hear or sing the Star Spangled Banner
31. In pick-up basketball, if it wasn’t the sole reason you missed a shot or turned the ball over then it was not a foul.

32. I would rather go backpacking than go to Disneyland…and it’s not even close.

33. People believe me to be more serious than I am

34. I consider Beethoven’s 9th Symphony the greatest piece of music ever written, but the kind of music I most often listen to is Hip-Hop and Rap

35. My favorite sport is basketball, but my favorite sports team is the San Francisco 49ers.

36. My wife is the most talented person I know

37. Being a Christian without church is like being a hand without a body

38. The best comedy movie ever made is Woody Allen’s “Love and Death”, but “Raising Arizona” is not far behind

39. My Mom and Dad would make my make the list of my top 5 closest friends

40. My favorite superhero is the Green Lantern

41. I worry that I will not be able to give my boys as good a childhood in the city as I had in the sticks.

42. I hate cocktail hour

43. I have wanted to be an attorney since I was 12

44. I still think of myself as being about 24

45. HBO’s “The Wire” is the best show no one watches

46. Romantically speaking, I have only ever loved one woman

47. I am doing what I set out to do and am good at it, but deep down I believe I should be doing something else.

48. I am loyal to a fault

49. My two boys are very different, but not in the ways I thought they would be

50. One of my favorite dates was when my wife and I went to the shooting range and I got to fire a Thompson machine gun

51. I enjoyed elementary school (except for 4th grade), freaked out in middle school, disliked high-school, absolutely loved college and felt right at home in law school

52. I hate when people say they are babysitting their own kids. You can’t babysit your own kids. It’s called parenting for crying out loud.

53. I would write full time on my various blogs if I could earn a living doing it

54. I got harassed a lot for owning a Hummer, but I still really liked it.

55. The best coping skill I ever learned was to laugh at myself

56. I believe in life after death…and I believe that I will have it….and I believe it will be good

57. I can’t figure out why I choose to watch so many movies I know are going to be awful before I watch them.

58. I am the opposite of “handy.”

59. My favorite chips are those little round bite size Tostitos. It has to be the bite sized. They are much better.

60. I spend a ridiculous amount of time watching, reading about, thinking about, talking about and playing sports and I have never tired of it.

61. When I am in a beautiful, ornate cathedral, I can’t shake the feeling that God would have preferred that the time and money to build the building was spent on something else.

62. I don’t like the rodeo. I feel bad for the animals.

63. I like my beverages cooled just to the brink of freezing. No hot drinks….ever.

64. There has never been a week in my life that I have enjoyed more than my honeymoon

65. I am not captivated in the least by video games

66. I think dreams are what happens when our consciousness ceases to order our thoughts and emotions and nothing more than that

67. I do not like books or movies that portray adultery as romantic

68. I am confident that I could speak or write on any topic for any length of time or number of words, whether or not I know anything about the subject

69. I am still fascinated by flying in an airplane

70. Being in a forest makes me think of my Dad

71. I love our house

72. I like having pictures, but I do not enjoy taking pictures

73. I learn and recall more if I don’t take notes

74. I once tackled Emelio Esteves to the ground

75. My favorite games growing up were “guns” and “GI Joes” and I am one of the least violent people I know.

76. Hearing a song I wrote sung by my home congregation is among the proudest, most satisfying moments of my life.

77. My buddy Jeff, my uncle Chip and Larry Bird taught me everything I know about basketball

78. I like clothes and shopping a little too much

79. I don’t like going to bed before 1am or getting up before 10am

80. I have seen every James Bond movie more than once and read every one of Shakespeare’s known plays except for 2 of the history plays.

81. The best advice I have ever received came from my Mom

82. Friday nights and Sunday afternoons are the most important personal times of the week for me

83. I shoot a higher percentage from the 3-point line than I do shooting layups

84. Unless there is a ball involved, I do not like to run

85. Brad Pitt and Jim Carey should have won Oscars for 12 Monkeys and Man in the Moon

86. The BBC version of the show “The Office” is better than the American version and it is not even close….not at all

87. I pronounce Porsche, “por-shuh”

88. Logical fallacies and errors in grammar distract me from the point of the message

89. I don’t get all the hubbub about the band Nirvana.

90. Whatever it is, I probably like it better fried and with Ketchup

91. I wanted two children because I didn’t think I could keep one from thinking the world revolved around them alone and don’t think I am capable of adequately parenting more than 2

92. I despise telling someone what I want for a birthday/Christmas/etc gift nearly as much as I despise being told what someone else wants

93. For the last 10 years my favorite Pop music artist has been Beck

94. My boys bring me a kind of joy I didn’t know existed before they were born

95. I believe superstition in any form is a form of idolatry and insulting to God

96. In any room I can not be comfortable sitting with my back to the door

97. I can sleep soundly in virtually any position in any environment

98. My wife never believes me when I tell her that she is more beautiful than the various movie stars and models that we see in movies and magazines, but I would pass a polygraph

99. My jury trial record is 22 wins and 3 losses and I can remember every moment of all 3 losses

100. I would rather my TV have a DVR than color if I had to choose