Da Vinci Code AGAIN
Tonight, the Top 4 sang. These American Idol finalists were really good. Interestingly, Tommy Mottola doesn’t seem like the mad, crazy person that Mariah made him out to be. He seemed pretty normal. I liked how they conveniently did not mention his involvement in Mariah Carey or J.Hoe’s career. Nice… just in Shakira’s and Destiny’s Child. They did show pictures of the MC and J. Hoe though. :P I mean, he seems to know what he’s saying. After all, he did propel these artists into superstardom so he should know what he’s talking about. Oh yeah, they didn’t mention him helping Lindsay Lohan with her career? Or Jessica Simpson? Hmmm… well, he did get “fired” over the Michael Jackson fiasco. I think it was just too much bad press. Plus, for him to propel these artists, although talented, into superstardom, he must be very shrewd… he did look rather… “rat-like”.
Let me see….
Taylor
- 1st Performance was cool - I love Jailhouse Rock
- 2nd Performance was ok - rather boring but his voice did sound good
Chris
- 1st Performance was quite nice… Suspicious Lies - I can’t believe I remember the song… the song is nice - he was OK.
- 2nd Performance was Ok. I hated how he screamed at the end of the song. That just destroyed it for me. What’s with his extra shiny head tonight??
Elliot
- 1st Performance was nice 
I love him in his suit and he sounded good and the song was nice….
- 2nd Performance was great too. I love his key changes and how his voice just flows … it reminds me of a brook and pebbles… the water gently easing its way down over the pebbles… he’s cool. I did have to agree with ths judges…. he was really good.
Katharine
- 1st Performance, I laughed in the first 3 seconds. It was a bit awkward. Fun, I guess and maybe just a bit silly but I actually laughed and if that was the reaction that she wanted, then ok. I laughed at her. Not with her. It was a good performance though. She seemed a bit desperate with the “McPhans McPhans” call when Ryan was reading out her numbers don’t you think?
- 2nd Performance - it could have been “the” moment but somehow, the arrangement seemed a bit rushed in my opinion, trying to add in too many grand parts or something…I think her voice when she was singing with Tommy on both songs sounded wonderful… I love her normal singing voice and not her stage voice… it’s lilting almost. I especially liked to hear her sing with Tommy… those were the better moments. But yeah, she’s good.
It is interesting to note that the idols are actually acknowledging their online fan base… hmm, it’s a good thing. It’ll spur people to visit the Idol website… the lead up to the finale. YEAY!
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I went for the Da Vinci Code talk at my church tonight. It was different this one since we watched an hour long video on the “fallacies” of the Da Vinci Code. Then it was followed by a Q&A session, kind of.
The video was a bit boring. Ok, it was major boring. Once it finished, 1/6 of the church left… and slowly, more people left till at the end maybe a 1/3 was left. Haha… The commentators on the video spoke rather quickly and the overall presentation in my opinion, did not beat the one I was at last week. Maybe because last week, they spoke slower and it was not so impersonal. I don’t know… Or maybe I preferred the style last week.
I have decided that Malaysians are an ignorant bunch. The Q&A session was nothing more than the audience spewing out their opinions. They should all own a blog. This way, they can make baseless claims and opinions like me.
I don’t know if it’s better for us to be informed, misinformed or uninformed. I was thinking, listening to these old people give their two cents, who said that we shouldn’t be reading this book because we’ll be allowing the Devil to do this and that… even though the facilitator had just said we need to have an open mind and be more tolerant.
What I didn’t get out of this talk was a need to learn more about church history. I didn’t come out feeling like I had learned anything compared to last week’s lectures. Neither did it stir in me a need to learn more about the background and history of my faith.
I do have to commend the facilitator for mentioning Lee Strobel. He’s written a few good books, written in the journalistic style, although the style in my opinion is very simple and casual, it does bring up some very good points for Christ.
At the Q&A time, you would expect people to ask well thought out questions or intriguing ones but instead, we had people just giving their “additions”. It surprised me that the people in my church are so conservative. There was no call to be more open, instead we had people who said the facilitator should stop promoting the book by calling it “good”… but it is clever and good! Tell me, if the book wasn’t good, well-written, would it have spurred so much controversy??
I don’t know, Malaysians just don’t think I’ve realised. We just accept whatever we’re fed with… as is evident with tonight when nobody really asked good questions. I mean, the church was full house ‘cos I stood up for the whole hour during the video. Unless of course, Malaysians being Malaysians we just follow the hype… which is sad but good because this is a good hype for Christians to be part of. Like I said in my previous post, it is better to have Christians who are more informed and who know what they believe in, who understand their relationship with God because the devil would rather have lukewarm, religious zealots.
Actually, that could be the problem with tonight. The facilitator an the video did not stress that point. That if we are sure in our faith, what is a movie or a book going to do? Nothing. I think there was only one guy who stood up and said that. There was only one guy who said it’s all about relationship because we have experienced God. It is rather worrying considering the rest who stood up, denounced the book, denounced the Hollywood hype and made some, in my opinion, almost anti-American comments. Haha.
There was a lady who stood up and spoke on her experience, how she had read all of Dan Brown’s books because she sat through 3 weeks of conversations with her girl friends who basically shared anti-Christian sentiments because they had read Dan Brown’s books. They apparently said that Christian was a lousy religion or something. See, I was rather impressed with her actually because she could stand up and say something constructive because she had read the books and it wasn’t just baseless claims like the others.
Then the best was when a young guy stood up and said he had done his “research” of the Knight’s Templars by watching National Geographic. The facilitator made a sarcastic jibe at the authenticity of National Geographic’s “studies” but I don’t think that young guy got it. I thought maybe this young guy would have said he had done some background work by going to the Internet and it dawned on me this problem with us, Malaysians. We don’t cite proper sources. We cite the Internet, television, the news, as the “reliable” sources to get information… the media that is biased, skewed and some times wrong. It proves that our education background is lacking in that area, the need to research, read, really find out, get both sides of the story. None. We need to hold “public talks” like this to balance what the media is saying about the Da Vinci Code.
I can imagine if such a talk were given in Australia, there would be many deep questions about Gnosticism, about what they meant by the true God, creator God and I have a feeling that someone in the crowd would have read about Gnosticism beforehand or would have a clue about it or some non-Christian would be there, throwing really hard but intelligent questions for us to ponder and to reflect upon. There was none of that tonight. Because we don’t know anything about it!
We have self-righteous people who claim to know everything about their faith, who believe they are grounded enough and don’t need to listen to both sides of the story because they won’t waver in their faith but …. that’s just so wrong isn’t it?! I don’t know, I shouldn’t speak about self-righteous people because I am looking at them as if I am superior to them too… I am just annoyed at their comments some times. Yeah, sure Jesus was mortal and God but … we forget the mortality some times and often times I believe. Christianity does have the human element but we just miss it, overlook it, dismiss it… sigh… it would make our faith more endearing in my opinion… although these days, Christianity is almost like the hippies, oh Jesus loves us… we feel Him, we are one with Him … etc etc.. hahah..
That is all I wanted to say about tonight I think. It wasn’t as powerful or stirring as last week. I heard some of the people who left right after the video, since I was standing by the exit and they made comments like, “cannot tahan, I’m falling asleep” (can’t take it, I’m falling asleep)… I mean, that’s not good at all! It’s so important and yet people aren’t drawn to stay. Compared to last week when everybody stayed back till the bell rung…I am comparing the differences because I want to say that I learned something last week compared to tonight.
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What else interesting happened in my life today? I slept at work today… lunch time…
Carmen’s eyes were swollen today. She looks like somebody else. Either she rubbed them too hard or she’s been infected with something. Who knows. It’s extremely puffy and everything.
Oh my, it’s 1:25am and I wanted to sleep before 1am. All that ranting about the Da Vinci Code. Haha… I think I was ranting more about Malaysians… HAHA… sigh, I’m just disappointed at us.
