We did a show the other night on the 7 lessons of the Tiger Woods affair. But Allen missed one important one: IF you are going to cheat, use a call girl instead of a mistress.

How's that for controversial?

It should be stated for the record that I vehemently appose cheating - both personally and in principle. Some have questioned me on this from time to time because I seem liberal on some of my theology pertaining to sexuality. Despite this assumption being irritating to no end, it isn't the focus of the post. However, let's make something clear: Tiger was wrong.

But this post isn't about cheating. It is about confidants. While reading an article in the New York Post, I came across Ashley Dupree (remember: Elliot Spitzer's call girl) lashing out at the 6 7 mistresses of Tiger. Saying that:

"Here you have all these girls accepting gifts, money, trips from Tiger in exchange for sex -- all the while knowing he is married. And now they all can't wait to tell their stories in exchange for even more money from the tabloids? And I was the hooker? At least I kept my mouth shut."

There you go folks: hookers jumped past grocery baggers for the number 4 spot of people I trust.

1. Attorneys (attorney-client privilege)
2. Doctors (doctor-patient confidentiality)
3. Priests (notice I didn't say Pastors)
4. Hookers
5. Grocery Baggers (bagger-shopper confidentiality)

In college I got into an argument in one of my Pastoral Leadership classes on what to do when someone confesses that they had abused a child. California law requires that you turn them in. I took the unpopular (and right) view that I would not turn them in, and suffer the consequences, because I viewed a pastor-parishioner confidentiality trust to be sacred and necessary for the betterment of the individual and culture as a whole. Why?

Living in a culture where attorneys are the only people we trust with our secrets does not produce healthy people that are empowered to change and better themselves. Many of the problems we face in relationships, marriages, and the like are due to the secrets we carry around.

The purpose behind the sacred trust of attorney-client privilege is that no one would tell their attorney anything if it weren't there. And just as this is necessary for a good defense, having a trusted confidant is necessary for personal and spiritual growth.

It probably seems a bit odd - given that I live so publically - but I take privacy and secrecy very important. People in my life have confessed to a myriad of past inequities - including cheating, abortions, serious drug use, and the like. Stories and circumstances that I will take to my grave. The relief you see in someone's face from the cathartic release of a burden being lifted by openly discussing past transgressions in an open, honest, and non-judgmental environment only speaks to the importance of such exchanges.

So in an odd turn of events, society could take a lesson from Ashley Dupree. When entrusted with private information, keep your mouth shut.

I am exhausted. I would be lying if I said I wasn't. It has been a hard month. 6 days a week. 14 hours a day. All just to keep my head above the water. Not ever feeling like I am making much progress.

I have sat down to write a column on many different topics, but nothing comes out. It is why my last post was 3 weeks ago (and actually I wrote that post a week before I posted it).

I had a 36-hour trip to Chicago that was fantastic and had some semi-profound thoughts from it, but even that has been difficult to write about. I am even having a hard time just staying up with the shows I DVR.

Speaking of which, this past "weekend" (Saturday) I hung out with a few friends, and caught up on my DVR. I was watching Dollhouse and then this caught my ear.


WHAT?!? Did I just hear what I thought I heard. Am I the only one who heard, "why do people get married in fuckin' stilettos?"

I Google-searched to see if anyone else noticed, and there were a few posts. But many still felt that couldn't possibly be the case. Then I checked the Closed Captioned version on Hulu.



What I loved is that I still swear she drops the F-bomb here. On a network show. In the 9pm slot on a Friday night.

Maybe the script called for "frickin'" but Eliza dropped fuckin' instead. I don't know. But I love the fact Fox uses the Closed Caption to try ad convince us we are hearing things :) I might try that the next time we have a caller drop the F-bomb and a station throws a fit (*cough* you know who you are).

Now I have one or two theories about what happened. As many said, Fox might just not have noticed and it slipped through. But I doubt that. I think it was done on purpose. It was done on purpose to figure out a.) whether or not anyone was watching, and b.) to figure out whether or not anyone cared.

I am not going to complain. I don't really think "swearing" should be outlawed by the FCC anyways. Extension of power by the government that they shouldn't have. But I did want to at least put my stake in the ground that I noticed.

So for now, this is about all I have energy for. Please excuse me for the superficiality of the post. But I at least thought it was interesting.

So what do you think? Am I so over worked that I am hearing things now?

I once had dinner with Wayne Huizenga, Jr. The heir to the Blockbuster / Waste Management fortune and at that time a significant owner of the Miami Dolphins. During dinner someone asked Wayne about the Dolphins and a new stadium.

Wayne's response was great. "I don't really think it should be the job of the governments to be paying for the construction of sports stadiums."

I would agree and usually am against governments building stadiums. However if I were to support a government fitting the bill for a project like a baseball or football stadium, I would insist on them looking at the Fort Wayne Tin Caps Parkview Field project as a case study.

I have followed the news and construction of Parkview Field from Stephen Parker's blog AroundFortWayne.info. When I was back in Fort Wayne in July, I went to two Tin Caps game and the real world Parkview Field experience just re-confirmed my digital world expectations.

Let's compare Parkview Field (newly built, city funded) to Gwinnett Stadium (newly built, county funded).

Gwinnett Stadium is the home of the Gwinnett Braves. A Triple-A team (next in line to the majors) in a major market (essentially Atlanta). The Fort Wayne Tin Caps are a Single-A (far from the majors) in market #106.

Gwinnett spent $60 million to build their new stadium. Fort Wayne spent $30 million.

Gwinnett stadium is basically a glorified Single-A ballpark with some nice suites and a open entrance. The park has no character. It has no theme. And to compensate they put these gawd-awful bounce houses around the park to "entice the kids." There was no planning for traffic flow. There was no creativity. And it was basically plopped in the middle of an open field / woods.

Parkview Field is designed to Double-A standards and everything, and I mean everything is done thematically. Playing off the Johnny Appleseed team name, everything is related. Sections are called "The Tree Tops" and "The Orchard." Seats are green. It sits beautifully placed within the city skyline in the background. And it is bringing people downtown.

I was at an Atlanta Braves game the other day with one of the owners of Hardball Capital (the company that owns the Fort Wayne Tin Caps). I thanked him for doing the stadium right. His response, "well we got the city to pay for most of it." And even though that is in stark contrast to Huizenga's comment two years earlier, it didn't bother me because at least they spent $30 million right.

As a Atlanta Braves season ticket holder and a Fulton County tax payer, all I can say is that I am glad I don't live across the river in Gwinnett County.

As a someone born and raised in Fort Wayne and one day looking to move back there and run for office, all I can say is that I am proud Fort Wayne continues to do things right.

Tell me this is not where you would want to watch baseball, and your not proud of $30 million dollars of government spending.


© Stephen Parker - AroundFortWayne.info


© Stephen Parker - AroundFortWayne.info

© John McGauley

This morning was one of those rare times in life where I got 5 hours of sleep and it seemed to be enough. Mixed with a mind that was racing at a million miles an hour, I decided to not fight it and just get up.

Due to my roommate's pretentiousness towards movies, my intake of movies has dropped significantly in the past year. Even Blockbuster tried to lure me back upon my last visit - since it had been so long - in hopes of bringing me back to our once happy and consistent relationship.

So with some extra hours on a lazy Saturday morning I popped in Seven Pounds thinking maybe I'd fall back asleep if it got boring. It turned out to be one of the deepest movies I have seen in a long time.

As I lay in my bedroom early this morning, amidst a sunrise I rarely get to be apart of, and a stillness I never experience in my home, I was brought to literal tears as I watched a man so deep stricken with a loss in his life attempt to make amends by lovingly sacrifice to those in need.

And while I guessed the ending from about 10 minutes into the movie, this did not detract in the least from its power.

I found myself gearing up for a powerful and emotional end, but it was the scene with a gift of new life for battered woman and her kids that best exemplifies the heart behind the grace and love in this movie. And as powerful as the final moments of this movie turned out to be, it was this scene that caught me off guard.



"All I ask is that you honor my wishes and of course live life abundantly."

Sound at all familiar?

Is that not the reason Jesus himself said he came to this earth?

Is that not the power of the gospel? That it not only has the profound ability to changes one's life, but that life that is changed yields one that isn't easy, or effortless, or without pain: but that is abundant and full.

I preached a mini-sermon series back in 2003 where I talked about the "Great Contradiction" between denying oneself and living life to the fullest.

Yet I wish I had this clip back then because I think it communicates not just the grace of God - which has become almost cliché in most sermons - but probably more importantly the heart behind the grace.

As Will Smith narrates, "...if you are wondering why you? Please stop." I find myself believing that it is that picture into the heart of God that best enables one to live an abundant life.

I have been waiting to do this blog for four years now. I knew one day it would come. I just never thought the complaint would be due to me (ok, I sort of thought it might).

Allen and I have been on the air for over four years and up until last week we have never had to use the DUMP button due to an obscene comment made on the air. That all changed last week.

Last Sunday Allen picked up a caller and the first words out of his mouth were "Fuck You" and then hung up. We were actually out of delay, so that went out live over all of our affiliates.

Then just last night, a caller from San Antonio (first night on that station by the way) was talking about something and accidentally said "shit" on the air. We were in delay, hit the dump button, and all was good. No worries.

The real surprising thing was the only real complaint we got over the last two weeks wasn't with the F-bomb being dropped, but rather the fact that when I talked about the bike race I completed for charity, I made a reference to how I could see how Lance Armstrong got "ball cancer" due to the way my crotch felt after riding for 30 miles.

One complaint! That's it. But as Family Guy puts it, for every complaint received has to equal one BILLION people offended:



I freely admit I am not concerned with obscenity. I don't really see a case to be made in the Bible that "fowl language" is really amoral. And don't even get me started on how as a culture everyone gets way too offended way too easy - especially Christians (and gays).

But beyond that, why is it the government's job to legislate this stuff anyway? Why did we decided that the public airwaves were owned and controlled by the government to begin with? And as delivery options become less dependent on "public airwaves" (satellite communication, cellular communication, hardwired communication), I have to ask myself, should the FCC and "obscenity" laws really become obsolete?

And as always, it isn't the situation we find ourselves in now that I am too worried about, but rather the precedent it establishes that will allow for the expanse of power:



Before anyone asks, no, we didn't get any complaints from the FCC (yet). I just found the Family Guy stuff to be pretty profound when I first saw it back in November of 2005 and have just been waiting for a "personal" story to commentate.

Enjoy the FCC song:

I went down to Orlando yesterday to visit a movie set and production facility for a film that a friend of mine is in-part financing.

Let's be honest. I am always up for a ride on his plane no matter where we are going.

And let's be even more honest. It was all the more cool that we were visiting a movie set in the pre-production phase. Seeing a set assembled, viewing the editing rooms, checking out the cast, and talking with the writers - simply awesome.

The movie is about child dying of cancer - and even though it sounds like a bummer - I am confident there will not be a more hope filled movie in 2010.

But I have to admit I was thrown for a huge loop on our last stop of the day. And it turned out to be the best part of the trip.

At the end of the day we visited "Give Kids the World" - an operation designed to allow kids dying of terminal diseases (and their families) a place to come stay for the week while experiencing Disney World, Universal Studios, and the like. They attempt at giving these families as care free and as "normal" of a vacation as possible.

I have never seen an operation that has thought of every detail as thoroughly as what I witnessed there. Everything from ice cream parlors for breakfast, to castle designed houses, to pools capable of having kids in wheel chairs go "swimming on their own." And since a lot of the kids won't make it to Christmas, they have Christmas every Thursday - including fake snow...in Florida! It was an extraordinary operation.

But as I sat on the plane going home - with my shoes off and sitting backwards amidst the clouds and mild turbulence - my mind drifted to an ex-girlfriend's brother, who I will call Aaron.

Aaron was a couple of years older than me and a great guy. When I dated his sister he was into wrestling and baseball and was incredibly intelligent. But he suffered from a disease known as Ataxia and was limited to a wheel chair.

Often times I would go into his room and talk about baseball - which I too enjoyed - and wrestling - which I did my best to get into. Sometimes he'd join us downstairs for a movie. As I look back, I interacted with him more than any girlfriends' siblings, yet he is also the one I still feel like I didn't interact with enough.

I still think about Aaron surprisingly a lot - pretty much anytime wrestling appears while channel surfing and sometimes when I am at Braves games.

I doubt with out knowing Aaron I would have as much respect and empathy for Give Kids The World as I did. Their goal of over-emphasizing the normal, so that some kids who never experienced normal could have some true enjoyment with their family was moving and something I will never forget.

I have always been a bit of a news junky. When other kids were watching cartoons and SNick, I usually was watching CNN. Oddly, now that I am in the "news business" - I find myself not watching much of it anymore.

And while I used to enjoy all sources of news, I have to admit, Fox News & MSNBC aren't news channels - they are commentary channels. The fact they masquerade as news channel is destroying America.

Take for instance this advertisement I saw in a trade publication I receive.



What stands out to me is the verbiage. Fox News is claiming they are the best at talking to America. Not talking with America. Not informing America. No they are good at talking to America. The verbiage brings to mind a parent talking to their child.

The problem is that Fox News & MSNBC have got it in their minds that they know better than everyone else in America. So in reality they have conceded any sort of unbiased credibility.

Now I have most likely pissed everyone off. Conservatives think Fox News is a God send. And liberals find MSNBC to "finally" have come around as a new source of light in a conservatively controlled world.

But the shallow minds who find Fox News and MSNBC to be unbiased news reporting are those who really only want to be told what they already believe.

It is sadly humorous to me when I say I trust CNN as the least biased news source. My conservative friends say, "ahh how can you watch the Clinton News Network. It's so liberal." My liberal friends say, "man, CNN is so conservative and are afraid to report the truth in fear of offending the right."

If they are pissing off both sides - and their ratings prove that - I think it actually means they are the only credible source left.

But this really isn't about the news. It is about what is tearing America apart: settling into camps of extremism regardless of the issue.

I made the comment in Creative last week that Perez Hilton is really no better than those behind GodHatesFags.com - they are just two extremes on the opposite end of the perspective. It isn't their perspective that is damaging, it is that they take their perspective to such a angered and figuratively violent extreme.

It's true with news sources. It is true with those in the gay debate. It is true with immigration. It is true in just about every issue we find contentious in our society.

If we would all just move to the middle, learn to compromise and love, and stop seeking refuge in the extremes, we would be a country worth living in again. A country our founders would be proud of. A country truly living out the golden rule.

But instead we just figuratively go on watching Fox News or MSNBC and continue to divide the country further and further apart. It's time to turn to CNN.

I spent the past weekend in San Diego with friends. It was a great weekender, and I shall blog about it later (once Sarah sends me the photos).

Last week we did a research show on Wednesday night for WSB until 1 am (Thursday morning) and then I departed out of Hartsfield at 7 am for San Diego. Unfortunately this meant I missed one of my favorite shows on television: Damages

I was watching Damages with my roommate the previous week and he said to me during a commercial break, "you know what is interesting about Damages? Every single main character is a woman - and they are all ruthlessly powerful and competent" (or something to that effect).

It's true and it is one of the reasons I love the show. The main character (Ellen) is a fresh graduate out of law school that is incredibly smart and competent in a high powered firm in New York started by another woman (Patty). It doesn't come off like a feminist show trying to make a point, because it is like there is no point to make. Well written. Great acting. It's fantastic.

But this got me thinking about Sarah Palin.

I really had a pretty neutral opinion of Sarah Palin. I think she had some pretty big gaffs - but the way I saw it these gaffs were because the McCain campaign wanted a toy VP running mate and frankly - that wasn't Palin's strong point.

So her public presence was a mixture of her wanting to say what she wanted to say, but having to hold back due to the McCain camp pressure, thus resulting in a awkward, naive public persona.

But I know Palin got the wrong rub by the media. And this past week Barack Obama proved my point.

You may have missed it, but I came across an interesting situation right before I went to San Diego where Barack Obama had sent a card to former-French President Jacques Chirac seemingly indicating that he thought Chirac was still President of France (or if you want the French version).

You know if Palin had written a note like that the media would have been all over her woman-nuts for not knowing "the real President of France."

The truth of the matter is that when women make mistakes in politics it is because they are ignorant, but when men make them, well they are just mistakes that have some obvious excuse or explanation (as evidenced by the Christian Science Monitor article).

I don't blame Obama for making a mistake. I don't even blame him for the British Prime Minister gaff either. There is a lot going on sometimes and it is easy to make a mistake. We are all - even Obama - only human.

I just wish America would cut the same slack for Palin (and others) as they do for Obama.

I could probably go on and on about this but I gotta go catch up on Damages on the DVR before our speaking event tonight.

It has been a frustrating couple of months.

It has been frustrating in almost every arena.

And for this reason, no more will be said, even though writing about it would be incredibly therapeutic.

These of course are probably not real problems per se. I mean after all, I have food on the table and a roof over my head. To quote Susan Isaacs in Angry Conversations With God: these would be middle class white girl boy problems.

But also as she said, these are still my middle class white girl boy problems. Thus making the frustration still real.

This is probably why I haven't been motivated to write recently (it's been almost a month since I wrote anything of real substance). I don't feel like writing anything contentious because I am sick of conflict. I don't want to write anything about my life because, well, frankly I shouldn't due to some of the readership here.

So instead I do nothing.

Last night after the show, Justin and I went to the Drunken Unicorn in the Highlands to shoot an interview of a band opening for William Elliott Whitmore. Even though we weren't going for William, I was pleasantly surprised by his music.

It isn't really a genre I like, but his lyrics resonated with me a lot in that small music club reeking of smoke and whisky.

Particularly the song Take It On The Chin. The recorded version doesn't really do what I heard last night justice. Maybe William had more whisky and his voice was scratchier. Maybe it was the atmosphere. Maybe it was the acoustics. I don't know. I do know the live version was longer as I stood there suspended taking in what I was listening to.



Two parts struck a large chord.

He said life is a battle and it ain't even fair
but if you stay up in your saddle,
you're already halfway there

Adding to these lyrics would probably take away from their depth, so I'll let them speak for themseleves.

I'll always be behind you son

The relationships that stand behind us no matter what are truly rare and important. It certainly makes the valley's of life harder when they are not within proximity.

I usually pride myself on my ultra-independence. But I freely admit, that independence has been devalued within me a bit over the past couple of months. I find myself questioning many of the pursuits I once held at the top, and longing to just be around those who would be right behind me as I'd take it on the chin.

So after a 10-hour work day, and the frustrations of 3 months building, listening to the works of William Elliott Whitmore with a hundred or so others was surprisingly and exceedingly reassuring to me.

I don't know why it has been so hard for me to blog recently. I have like a billion topics in the can, but I just can't seem to sit in front of the computer to do any of them. So this shall be quick.

I haven't watched the SuperBowl in its entirety for the past four years. This makes me very sad everytime I think about it, so let's not bring it up again.

I did however see the pregame show (including the botched Obama interview). I saw this ad while importing stuff for the show at WSB and I about died laughing.



Just for the record, I am going to start calling everyone I see in the Fort Wayne Country Club locker room Shankopotamus.

And that name might just replace "Scuba Steve" as the name I call people when I can't remember who they are - if you've hung out with me for more than 10 minutes, you know what I am talking about.

If I get motivated I'll do a a couple of blogs in the next couple of days on my favorite and least favorite commercials from the SuperBowl. Hulu is kind enough to put them all online for sorry saps like me who didn't get to see them live.

But then again, the question will be, will I be motivated enough this week to do so.