Pirate1974

Billy Graham went to the same elementary school I did, about 35 years ahead of me, and his ministery headquarters is here, so I might be a bit prejudiced. The big difference I see is that Billy Graham never tried to start his own ministry or his own denomination or run his own fellowships. He sees his mission as bringing the gospel to as many people as possible and then letting them find their own way to a local church of their choice. His crusades are filled with volunteers from all denominations to help people who might be looking for a church after the altar call. Another big difference is that I can go to billygraham.org and download a 25-page report that shows what the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association does with all the donations that they receive. I can see that they took in $85,000,000 in fiscal 2003, and there's an accounting of where every nickel went. Of course, I can't tell you if its all accurate, but try getting something like that from our friends in New Knoxville. Billy Graham could have profited big time from all the money he takes in, but he's never done that. He lives comfortably, and has a nice house in Montreat, NC but its no mansion. I'm sure Jerry Falwell or Oral Roberts have something much nicer. The story about him never being alone with a woman that's not his wife is true. Apparently, he won't even get on an elevator by himself if there's a woman alone in it.

Alan Rickman Love Actually Emma Thompson

Groundhog Day

Shortstop would seem to be the perfect position for a kid who has goalie skills, excathie. I can understand the position of the league up to a point. When I was involved in sports, especially baseball, there were always situations where coaches were trying to bring in a player late, after the draft. The kid was always the coach's son's best friend, or something, so they wanted to play on the same team, of course. The league can take care of this by assigning the late kid to a team of their choosing, and definitely not the team of the coach that brought him in. That would take care of the problem of a coach trying to sneak in a "ringer" to help his own team. This kind of thing seems to happen more in baseball than any other sport, for some reason. The rule about allowing the kid to play, but not letting him pitch, seems kind of silly. When I was coaching kid baseball, everybody wanted to pitch, even the kids who couldn't get the ball over the plate if they were standing two feet away from it. It was not easy to have to tell most of them they weren't going to be doing any pitching. But here's an example of "be careful what you wish for:" My older son was a very good baseball player from the time he started playing t-ball at the age of 5. When he was 10, he was a great hitter and fielder, but he really wanted to pitch. His coach that year let him pitch exactly one inning all season. At the end of the season, there was a tournament, and the team ran out of pitchers because there was a rule that a kid could only pitch seven innings in one week or something like that. So the coach put Brian in to pitch the last two innings that game after only pitching in one inning all year. It was awful. He walked about seven batters, hit a couple more and ended up losing the game. The other coach was yelling and jumping up and down like his kids had really done something besides standing at the plate with the bat on their shoulders. It was the longest hour of my life. Brian asked the coach to take him out but he said they didn't have anybody else to put in. I could have killed him. I know the line is that kind of stuff is supposed to build character, but Brian never wanted to play baseball again after that day. Sometimes I think the best thing for kids is to give them a bat and ball and send them to the sandlot with no parents anywhere around.

Save those nickels, excathie. ;)--> I've been involved in kid's sports (basketball, baseball, soccer) as a coach and a parent for over 20 years so I've probably seen it all. There's no question that adults can sometimes really take the fun out of sports for kids.

Yeah, he looks like what I remember, Kathy. I guess I didn't imagine it.

Don't know Flip the Frog, but here's one for you cartoon fans. Does anybody ever remember watching Bosco cartoons when they were a kid? I think they might have been made in the 30s or 40s, but I used to see them all the time on tv in the 50s. Nobody else I've ever asked seems to have heard of Bosco and I haven't seen one in probably 45 years. He was a little guy and I can't even remember now what he did but I sure remember watching them. It seems like he might have been black which is probably why you don't see them any more.

Richard Gere First Knight Sean Connery

Right.

The guy's been in town two days, and already he thinks he's David O. F***ing Selznick.

The Blues Brothers?

I guess the last real novelty songs to get any airplay were Weird Al Yankovic's stuff from the 80s and 90s. Some of his song parodies were pretty clever. I miss that stuff too like Ray Stevens, Sam the Sham, David Seville. But then there was Disco Duck.

I really couldn't care less about all this but why wasn't Charles "allowed" to marry Camilla way back when, and who said he couldn't? His mum? Is it because there was some doubt about whether or not she was a virgin, apparently one of the criteria that Diana managed to pass? I thought Charles just broke it off when he buggered off to play soldier boy which is why she married that Bowles guy. For a guy who's never done an honest day's work in his life, Charles looks unbelievably old for his age.

Lolita Jeremy Irons The Man in the Iron Mask

Bess Armstrong High Road to China Tom Selleck

The Intimidator taking pfal? Somehow I find that really hard to believe.

That was me, for sure. I got in because my girlfriend got suckered into it first, and that's the only reason really. I had a good time with some of the people and enjoyed stuff like the coffeehouses, but I paid very little attention to the teachings. I took pfal to be part of the "in crowd" and because it was expected and to get people off my back, but it didn't change my life one bit. I did just enough to be considered "active," without attracting any attention so I wouldn't be asked to do anything. I can't honestly say that the experience itself was bad, but there's no question that it did cost me that relationship.

I was watching cartoons with my kids back in the early 90s and that new "Alvin" show came on. I witnessed something that day that I'll never be able to forget: Alvin & the Chipmunks doing "Satisfaction." That was just wrong in so many ways.

Kyle MacLachlan The Doors Val Kilmer

Three Big Ten teams down. Everybody Loves Raymond (Felton) at least here in NC. It was a heck of a game. I thought for sure it was over when Carolina went up 15 but Illinois kept fighting back. They have a great team and they had a great season. Too much Sean May.

Firestarter Drew Barrymore 50 First Dates

That's it.

Nope

That woman is a woman!