I put this on my Netflix queue and it finally arrived last night. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a documentary about the animation department at Disney. It primarily focuses on its re-awakening (hence the title) of a department that had been waning since Snow White. You follow how Disney was able to achieve success again with feature animated films in an industry and a culture that forgot about this medium. Very rarely does Disney lower their guard and allow people into the nitty gritty of their business, past the magic, because this achievement didn’t come easy. I was reminded that past all the magic of Disney, deep down, it is still a business.
An aspect of the documentary that I really enjoyed was seeing what kind of leaders and people were needed to achieve this goal. At the chairman level in a company, it requires a different breed of leaders. To be able to lead a company like Disney in a new direction required them to not only have an ability to see the bigger picture and a vision, but to get people on board with you, whether they liked it or not. It meant that not everyone will liked their ideas or even them as a person, but they had to be able to take the hate. I had no idea that a power struggle was going on between Roy Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner. After watching how much work went into these films, I now have a whole new respect for them. Who knew they were about to cut the “Part of Your World” scene out of the film because management felt it wasn’t relating with their test audience. These are the things you’ll learn about from this documentary. Wow, I feel like a Reading Rainbow kid, summarizing a book. Oh well. But, you should definitely check this documentary out.
I had the pleasure of going to David Crowder’s last appearance in LA as the David Crowder Band this past weekend. The evening would have been pretty darn perfect if it wasn’t for a few “fans” that happened to be standing right next to us. I didn’t want to hate, especially being at a Christian event, but come on with the come on. These guys had no respect for the people around them with their initial declaration of “excuse me, but here to here *outlining an area* is our space”, their constant talking, their lack of respect of other patrons in the theater, and the massaging. WOW, the massaging! It wasn’t even the nice, affectionate sort of massaging. The next step would’ve been sex. And she was massaging him the whole night. Amazing. This is not to mention the few drinks they had during the pre-show, which is a whole different discussion.
I blame it on the Fish 95.9. Yes, I’m calling you OUT. Please, from now on, do not sponsor anymore concerts because you attract the vermin of SoCal. Also, get out of my city. La Mirada does not want to host the Fish anymore. I am the mayor (Foursquare says so).
ANYWAY, I’ll get to the point of this post. What really redeemed the night for me was the band Gungor. Now, I’ve seen their album on iTunes, and sampled some of their songs, but never took the plunge and bought their songs. So when I heard they were one of the opening bands, I was curious already. They came out. Three of them. The guy started playing guitar, and this girl is singing with him. She is very pretty from afar, and I’m already liking this band. Then comes the cello, and I get even more excited because the sweet, sweet sound of this giant violin makes any song better. So far so good, and then all of a sudden I hear a beat come in. I’m confused though, because there’s only three of them, and they are all occupied. So I look a little closer, and EFF. The frickin cellist is beatboxing. Right then and there, Gungor became my favorite band, and chose to follow them forever. It was mesmerizing. To top everything off, they go into an instrumental, and show off their musical abilities and I realize my mouth has dried out because it has been open since the beginning of the song. Not even the massaging was bothering me. Actually I probably would’ve joined them if I knew them better because I was so happy.
I went home and bought both their CDs. Oh, and I found out later that the girl is married to the lead singer. You can’t have it all.
They announced at the concert that they will be back in LA in the Spring for their own concert, and I know that everyone that heard them with me that night is going. I plan on going too since they’re my favorite band now, remember? If you want to join me and be amazed over and over again, let me know. For now, you can just watch/listen to this:
Dude, should I? I won’t be restricted by just Nike shoes anymore since it uses GPS, and the BEST thing about it is that it has a backlight. Night running FTW. So pricey though…hook it up Nike.
I just enrolled in an ASQ course to become a CQE (Certified Quality Engineer). Yesterday’s class was the first, and the instructor took some time to go over some philosophies of quality by some of the founding fathers of modern day quality systems. One guy by the name of Dr. Joseph M. Juran created the quality statement:
“Adopt a revolutionary rate of improvement in quality, making quality improvements by the thousands, year after year”.
And what the instructor pointed out was that the statement that Dr. Juran is making here is being revolutionary v. evolutionary. I had to let that sink in for a bit. Well, what does it mean to be evolutionary, or to go deeper, to live an evolutionary life. Most anyone would agree that they strive to be better. And for the most part, if you do what you are asked, the natural course is to get better, or evolve. But what makes Dr. Juran’s statement different is that it’s asking for something more radical. A revolutionary change for the better, which calls on someone to not only do what is expected, but to go above and beyond. A revolutionary change versus an evolutionary is exponentially greater, with greater yields.
Now applying this to my walk with God, we always say that Jesus was a revolutionary. Am I not asked to live like he did? Yes, I can be a good person in life. Yes, it’s getting easier to pray in public. Yes, I don’t try to hide that I’m a Christian, but this is all “evolutionary”. What I need to start asking myself is what I can do to live that revolutionary life. And this is where Jesus’ teachings get exponentially more difficult to swallow. Love your neighbor…check. Love strangers…not bad, check. Love those who you absolutely despise right now…uhhhh. An evolutionary love will not help in this case because this kind of love is rigid in it’s course. You can work at it, read books, be patient, and when your relationship with that person changes (whether it was your doing or theirs) you can now love that person. A natural, evolutionary course. But a revolutionary love calls for you to love that person no matter what. When everyone’s together and a bashing session on that person begins, a revolutionary love requires you to stop that conversation, and even defend him/her. EVEN when your natural feelings about that person still exists. This love forces you to go beyond what you “feel” and just do as Jesus. And why do we this? Simply because of what JC did for us.
Take Jesus out of the equation and you create limits. For example, a really really really good person without Jesus will perform acts of kindness upon a person that is annoying. The first attempt receives no attention. Since this person is really really good, they decide to continue with it, and reach out again to that person. Again, no response. This might go on for a few more times, but eventually the really good person will stop trying with the justification of “I’ve tried my best, but if it’s going nowhere, then I’m just wasting my time”. They leave that person, with their good morals still intact.
What does Jesus want us to do? Don’t stop. We never stop because Jesus never gave up on us. It’s only because of him we keep going because to us, these “acts of kindness” are not little awards that we can hang on our refrigerators, but instead it’s our way to shine our light in darkness. So that when they finally scratch their heads and ask why we are doing this, we can say that we’re only paying it forward. Our kindness, and our love is not even a fraction of what Jesus gave to us. This is why we don’t stop. And since darkness is just the absence of light, we should never turn it off.
