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Tomorrow, we will all sit around the television and watch Superbowl XLKI.4 and, for once, we won’t fast-forward through the ads. An ad came on several years ago, though, that has not been topped. The best superbowl ad of all time: The same company tried again, but you just can’t beat a herd of cats. And on the animal theme, this commercial was great, but they missed an opportunity for a laugh. At the end of the commercial, I think they should have focused on a small squirrel dropping on the road. What are your favorite commercials?

My friend Susan Isaacs has written a book that will hit shelves shortly. And this week she got a raving review from Publishers Weekly. If you’re looking for a good winter read, you’ll like this one. Susan is an actress in Los Angeles who has been in and out of show business and in and out of faith, too. She approaches spirituality with a comedians depth, and her book is as honest as a diary. From Publishers Weekly: Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir God in couples counseling? Sounds sacrilegious, but in the adept hands of comedian, writer and actress Isaacs, it’s a success. Isaacs reached bottom at age 40: no job, no boyfriend, no home. Of course, she blamed God. So off they went to counseling with the ever-patient therapist Rudy. Isaacs moves easily between recounting her life story and her counseling sessions. She describes encounters with the Nice Jesus of her Lutheran upbringing; the “Oakie” Pentecostal church and the militant counselor; the “Rock-n-Roll” church and the “Orthopraxy, Dude” church, plus her rocky acting career and her love life, including guilt-ridden sex and Mostly Mister Right. Isaacs readily admits to being snarky, but she’s honest [...]

Originally, the plan was to attend inauguration with Jeremy Cowart and have a bit of a photo contest. Jeremy and I actually used the same camera, and even the same lens, and on our first day, shooting the exact same shot of the capitol dome, his LCD screen revealed a whole different planet. After that I hardly took my camera anywhere. So, a slight adjustment to the contest. I’ll just print the winning photos, which are his, and offer some literary snapshots. A couple days before Inauguration I was to speak in chapel at Georgetown. We showed early and walked along M street to grab lunch. While there were crowds along M, it wasn’t too bad. Many had headed down to the mall where U2, Bruce Sprinsteen and others were putting on a free concert. We stepped into a gallery where a dozen or so artists were displaying their campaign-inspired work. Jeremy ran into his friend Herb Williams whose work is created entirely of crayons, not drawn with crayons, but actually created by laying crayons side by side next to each other or pointed out toward the viewer. Shepherd Fairey was also present, mostly doing interviews for the press. Shepherd [...]

I put together a quick video of Lucy. She’s a bit bigger now. Yes, I am that guy. But honestly, if you had a dog this great, wouldn’t you be obsessed? She is very smart. I tried to teach her to sit and stay in English but she only responds to Latin, which, if you think about it, is quite smart because it is a root language.  Subsisto, Lucy, Subsisto! (The song is Sinead O’Connor’s “No Man’s Woman”)

A Couple years ago I interviewed about twenty-five friends and asked them each five questions. 1. What did you think of God/Christians before you became a Christian? 2. When did you realize there was a dark or hard side to life? 3. When did you realize there was a dark or hard side to yourself? 4. What did it look like when God broke into your world? 5. What does your life look like now? I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d get when I did the interviews. I had a film crew in from South Africa, but only a week before they arrived, all our film options vanished. When they got to Portland, I had nothing for them to shoot. We sat around in my breakfast nook trying to figure out what we were going to do. And we came up with the interview idea. After that, we put together a little book that takes a similar journey, just processing the idea of Jesus from an outsiders perspective. The book is called “The Open Table” and so is the DVD. They are available separately, but I hope they end up being used to hand to folks who have questions about [...]