Yesterday, my little girl uttered the words that every father longs to hear:

"Daddy, can we go outside and play football?"

Every night when I go to bed I hope that I wake up the next morning to find that the St. Louis Cardinals have made a big play to secure the services of Greg Maddux for the upcoming season.

The Cards will be playing for third place in the NL Central, at best, without quality starters in the number three and four spot in the rotation this year. Barring serious injury to their respective pitching staffs, I think that the Astros and the Cubs are going to roll the NL. The rest of the NL is simply going to have to come up with a means of managing the damage.

Have you ever thought that maybe we could come up with better presidential candidates by just having everyone draw straws?

Maybe we ought to tape American Idol and watch it after the toddler goes to bed.

Last night she was hollering at her Care Bears, "YOU. CAN'T. SIIIIINNNGGGG".

What kind of guy locks his truck with the keys in the ignition and the engine running?

You're looking at him, Lupe.

I need someone who knows something about baseball, or someone who is a Braves fan (heh-heh), to tell me if they've heard or seen anything out of John Smoltz this off-season... Is he coming back? Do you think he'll be dominant again? Is he done for? What is your opinion on the future of John Smoltz?

I need to know. Thank you.

Okay. I'll admit it. I've watched the first three episodes of American Idol...

...and the gig is up. I see what they are doing.

Ten thousand people show up to the auditions, but in each city only about a thousand make it in front of the panel of celebrity judges, (according to Paula Abdul's interview on Letterman last night.) What happens to the other nine thousand? It is obvious that they are weeded out somehow... but what sort of selection process promotes the sort of non-talent and pig-ignorance that we get to see on TV? Surely these are not the 1,000 best candidates.

You see, what must be happening is that they promote a small handful of the very best and a whole load of the absolute worst. The moderate talents and marginally musical are disqualified by someone other than Simon. Which is okay, really. It is great entertainment to see terrible singers who think they are the Second Coming get their pitiful little egos ripped to shreds. But I wish they would just can the whole "you're wasting our time" act. No. Someone else promoted them to that level of the competition and it is that person who is guilty of the time-wasting.

No one walks in that big audition room who wasn't sent there, and the really really awful ones are being set up the whole way. I imagine they go through the lower levels of the process, audition by audition, being promoted all the way to the top while each judge is snickering into his hand saying, "Wait till Simon sees this one!" You can even see this in the way the terrible ones are interviewed by that host guy before they go in. It is a joke the whole way.

So the whole point is that at this level of the competition, the celebrity judges really aren't judging at all. The decisions have already been made further down the line. There are no gray-area contestants. They can either carry a tune or they are really really awful. The judges are just there to rip on the horrible ones. And I'm not saying it isn't funny. That's just the way it is.

What I really wonder about is why there are so many people who think that they have what it takes to "make it" in the music business. Why do they express such rage and disbelief when they are told that they can't sing? Why do they always express that they are going to make it anyway? Are there that many delusional people in the world?

I'm sure there is something behind that, and I'm sure it says something about our generation, but I'm not sure what, and I'm too tired to figure it out.

One more thing. If the cut-off age wasn't 25, I'd be blowing that competition away. Yeah. Whatever.

I wish there were some kind of similar competition for people who are good at Muppet wrestling. I would be SOOO there.

I've come to the conclusion that Magna Doodles are amillenial.

My biggest problem with television is that when I actually have time to watch something, there's nothing on. And don't tell me I need to get cable. Whenever we go to a hotel or stay with relatives who have it, I'm all like, "Wow. 78 channels!", and then I'm all like, "Okay... there's absolutely nothing on."

But the local stations are just terrible. When did old reruns and "B" westerns get replaced by informercials and Jenny Jones? I mean you simply cannot find a movie or a classic TV show on Saturday afternoon anymore.

Any of you who grew up in St. Louis, do you remember how great KPLR channel 11 used to be before it sold out to the WB and before there was such a thing as informercials? There was ALWAYS something great on. They had the best after-school cartoons and they always had three pretty good movies on Sunday afternoon. Not to mention that they were THE home of the Cardinals and Blues. Every single Cards game was on channel 11.

If I was in charge of programming at a television station, I would do things a lot different. I know that I'm not in charge. I'm just saying "If I was".

It would be the network by Duane, for guys who like the same stuff as Duane. You could call it the "D".

Buddy: Hey man, what're you watching.
Other Buddy: Oh, man, I'm watching the "D". They've got the best shows ever back to back to back.
Buddy: Cool.
Other Buddy: Totally.

For example... here would be my daily schedule from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m.

6:00 AM Looney Toons
7:00 AM Sesame Street
8:00 AM The Muppet Show
8:30 AM Three Stooges / Little Rascals
9:00 AM Dukes of Hazzard
10:00 AM The A-Team
11:00 AM SportsCenter
12:00 PM Afternoon Movie
2:00 PM Cops
2:30 PM World's Scariest Police Chases
3:00 PM Leave it to Beaver
3:30 PM GI Joe
4:00 PM Star Trek
5:00 PM Star Trek: TNG
6:00 PM The Andy Griffith Show
6:30 PM The Beverly Hillbillies
7:00 PM The Simpsons
7:30 PM Cheers
8:00 PM Seinfeld
8:30 PM Taxi
9:00 PM Hill Street Blues
10:00 PM David Letterman
11:00 PM Craig Kilborn
12:00 AM SNL

Of course everything is subject to being pre-empted by Cardinals Baseball or Rams Football... and I would make sure to secure the express written consent of each league.

Then again, if there were such a network I would never get anything done. And if you would admit it, neither would you. That network would be so awesome, the other stations would get jealous and have the FCC force it off the air, but not before national productivity plummeted to an all-time low.

Anyway. I guess we are stuck with what we are stuck with.

Ooh, ooh. Turn on channel 8. It's the Farm Report.

Since some folks have posted a list of their reading for the previous year, I thought I would like to do the same, but not to illicit a “Hey look at him” sort of a response or even a “Wow. He sure reads some dumb stuff” response.

I just thought it would be good to record what I’ve read and to know what year I read it, and this is as good a place as any to write it down.

The side benefit is that if you are interested in my two-bit opinion of anything on this list, I’d be happy to provide it… within a week or two of your asking.

Some of the stuff I read in 2003:

Through New Eyes – Jordan
The Binding of God – Lillback
The Call of Grace - Shepherd
Paradise Restored - Chilton
The Meaning of the Millennium - Clouse
The Puritan Hope - Murray
A Quest for Godliness - Packer
The Guise of Every Graceless Heart - Elniff
The Study of Liturgy – Wainwright
Christian Liturgy - Senn
Leviathan - Hobbes
Robinson Crusoe - Defoe
Social Contract - Rousseau
Origin of Inequality - Rousseau
Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne
Federalist Papers
Anti-Federalist Papers
Democracy in America - Tocqueville
C. G. Finney's Autobiography
Walden - Thoreau
Pride and Prejudice - Austen
Battle Cry of Freedom - McPherson
The Killer Angels - Shaara
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Symphonic Theology - Poythress
Lectures on Calvinism - Kuyper
The Calvinistic Concept of Culture – H. Van Til
Ideas Have Consequences - Weaver
Typology of Scripture – Fairbairn
The God of Promise and the Life of Faith - Hafemann
The King James Version Debate – Carson
The Ancient Text of the New Testament – Van Bruggen
The New England Mind – Miller
HP & The Sorcerer’s Stone - Rowling
HP & The Chamber of Secrets - Rowling

Bring me the head of Mike Martz.

Wow. So long since I’ve posted. My apologies.

Christmas was great. Best ever. It is the first Christmas that my two year old actually knew what was going on and had the anticipation of opening presents. She was so good about not touching the presents under the tree that she even rebuked me when I was shaking something that Sarah had put under there for me. She ran across the room to me screaming, “NOOO DADDY! Put that down RIGHT NOW. We have to wait til CHRISTMAS!” Wow. She’s the boss.

I woke up before anyone on Christmas morning. I was up, showered and dressed at 6:00. I couldn’t wait to start, I was so excited. I finally just went in Bailey’s room and got her up at 7:00. It was great to wake up in my own bed on Christmas and to be on our own schedule all day. Visiting family is nice, but I really enjoyed the low-stress level and moving at our own pace.

Bailey had been asking for a Buzz Lightyear for about a month. I found a pretty cool one for her that shot a rocket out of his backpack. It was very neat to watch her open something that she had been asking for and to see her get excited about it. I can’t believe it has been two weeks and we still have all of his pieces.

She also got a big wooden train set… which I enjoy playing with… and a few other assorted dumb girl toys. I made out pretty good. Sarah got me a new driver, which I can’t wait to take to the driving range and try out, an electric razor and one of those Atari joysticks that has ten old Atari games on it that you plug right into the TV. Pretty fun. Mostly nostalgic, but fun. (It has Gravitar, which I never played when I had an actual Atari, but which I find very addicting.)

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Back at the beginning of December I visited again with the group-forming-a-church in Springfield, Missouri to get a second look at whether or not I would be a good fit as their pastor. As I mentioned before, they have a pretty good-sized core group… about twelve families, and they have a lot of good things going for them. I preached for them a second time, and they are still talking to me… so it looks to be headed in a good direction. They have found a church that will help them by providing the necessary oversight to get them into the Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals. They are organizing as a church near the end of the month, so it is an exciting time for them. We’ll see how all that pans out.

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We loved ROTK. How is it that Peter Jackson can craft three beautiful, rich, expensive, computer-graphics-saturated movies and release them all in three years, while it takes George Lucas nine years to release three movies?

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If you ask Bailey, “Where are the Rams going?”, she responds, “To da SUPA BOWWL.” I hope she’s right. I don’t think Carolina is going to be a problem on Saturday, but I’m hoping that the Packers beat the Eagles so that the Rams can reclaim the home field advantage for the Conference championship game. Martz makes me so nervous.

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Sarah had been wanting to read the Harry Potter books, and so I bought her a set of the first four paperbacks for Christmas. I caved in and read the first two. They’re okay, but nothing special. I remain convinced that as literature they are of only marginal value, and that there are much better things for kids to read… but they are mostly harmless. (I did think that the part where Harry sacrificed a goat, held aloft its still-beating heart while muttering a devotion to his Dark Lord and then proceeded to carve a pentagram into his own forehead was a bit much, but oh well. Kids these days.)

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Too many things going on to write about… too many other things to be doing than writing here…

Just wanted to let you know that I’m not dead.