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Monday Morning Music: Brave

/ Alex Doriot / Leave a comment

(Click Here if you can’t see the video above.)

There are few things more brave than dancing like crazy in a public place.

One of them may be admitting I really like the song and the video for “Brave” by Sara Bareilles.

Sara Bareilles’ song and album have improbably garnered a slew of Grammy nominations for this year’s awards.

You may not even realize you’ve heard “Brave” until you recognize it as the jingle for all the new Windows commercials you’ve seen during every commercial break of NFL football and just about everything else you watch on television. Continue reading →

How To Be A Living Hand Turkey

/ Alex Doriot / 1 Comment

photo-5Hand Turkeys are not high art.

Surely you crafted a Hand Turkey in your younger days. Perhaps your child or grandchild made one for you. Or maybe you created some other elementary artwork as well – a Christmas ornament made from an ashtray, a picture frame glued with glitter and macaroni, etc.

You worked hard on these crafts. Spent afternoons in a grade school classroom perfecting the placement of buttons and stickers onto an oddly adorned flower pot to give to your mother or father on a special occasion.

But these crafts weren’t art. You were 7 when you made them. Continue reading →

The Death Of Rock Band

/ Alex Doriot / 1 Comment

76181_166540390043728_7807469_n“I’ve got next on Rock Band!”

When I first stepped onto the job as youth pastor at The Hill Baptist Church five years ago, this was the call I heard every time a student would arrive at church.

Literally every Sunday and Wednesday before and after church we would spend at least an hour playing “Livin’ On A Prayer” and “Alive” (or at least pretending like we were playing them). We themed 2 Lock-Ins after our Rock Band and Guitar Hero addiction.

I even spent one Saturday afternoon with two students playing through the ultimate setlist of every song on Rock Band 2 in one sitting. We played through half of the setlist before I accidentally tripped over the power cord to the Xbox 360. So we turned the machine back on, started from the beginning, and played through it all again.

Rock Band and Guitar Hero were obsessions for this group of students and for so many teenagers across the world. Which is kind of crazy, considering how nonexistent Rock Band and Guitar Hero are just a few years later. Continue reading →

The Office and The Quest For A Happy Ending

/ Alex Doriot / 2 Comments

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Not every story gets a happy ending.

After 8 years and nearly 200 episodes, I’m worried “The Office” will become one of those stories.

After dismissing the show when it first premiered as yet another soulless remake of a British series, I fell in love with the Dunder Mifflin drones through DVD  marathons of the first 3 seasons.

My friends and I watched and rewatched Jim’s slow and subtle courtship of Pam, Michael’s tasteless jokes, and Dwight’s beet-loving eccentricities over beach trips and long afternoons when we should have been studying instead.

Now with the finale airing tonight on at 8 PM on NBC, “The Office” comes to the end of its story. For diehard fans, this comes with disappointment and with relief. Continue reading →