We're out of town this weekend, celebrating my mom's 70th birthday (my mom is proof that "70 is the new 50" - she's so young in so many ways). Fellow Thinkling Phil lives in the same city my parents do, and he and I got together for a quick mini-Moot this morning over breakfast tacos.

It's amazing how much good conversation can be packed into a short time. It happens any time I'm talking live with a Thinkling; there's a unique bond there and somehow we're both wiser when talking together than we are on our own (if that makes any sense).

That was a good Moot, Phil!

Some pics off of Stroke's camera from the Thinklings December 2007 Ent-Moot . . .

Here's Stroke, straight off the set of a House of Pain video:


"Say hello to my leetle friend":


Bill basks in the joy of simply sitting next to Jared:


Pretending to ponder the endless potential permutations of moves in Bird and Blo's game of chess, Rod really just wanted to pick the board up and smash it on someone's head Hulk-style, so they could go back outside and smoke some more cigars:


Although he looked like he was pondering the endless potential permutations of moves in his and Bird's game of chess, Blo is really just asleep with his eyes open:


A real meeting of the minds:


We did a whole lot more than sit around the chess board, but these are the only pics we got. Enjoy if you can!

I thought this would be appropriate to post this weekend. Ignore the glam rock hairdos ...

Entmoot wrapped up about 7 hours ago and I'm still a bit groggy. We partied hard all night and had a good time with guest stars Rob T. and Stroke. It was a great Moot.

Unfortunately, the event was scarcely documented. I didn't bring a camera and De forgot his video camera. So we're sans a Moot Documentary this year! I know, it's a bummer.

I'm too pete to give a full blown account of the evening, but we definitely had some lively discussion on some assorted topics ...

- The return of Blo
- Putin as Antichrist
- Rod's church
- Blo's church
- De's church
- The Thinklings site in general
- The Blogosphere
- Alien abductions
- The Beatles vs. (fill in the blank)
- Solo blogs
- Magic tricks
- General abductions of the human variety
- Steak
- A1 vs. ketchup
- Rob T.'s sidearm
- Pop culture
- Movies such as Borat and The Prestige
- Remarriage after divorce
- Natural Neil
- Etc.
- Etc.
- Etc.

We all had a great time!

Our annual convivial gathering is upon us! It's Moot time!

It's hard to boil a 10 hour Moot down to six or seven minutes, but this will give you a small taste of what Moot is like:

Photogging the mootage wasn't a real priority for me last night, as you can probably tell from the quality of the pictures, but I did manage to get a few snapshots of the guys in (in)action.

Bird and Blo getting their grub on:


Bird gets horizontal:


We were graced with the presence of the ethereal Sha:


Stroke noshes Zapps:


My best friend and I closing out the Moot at I-Hop:


De and Bird took some pics, as well, so we may see those shortly. Also, De shot quite a bit of video and a neat little MootMovie is promised.

There are Moots and there are Moots. Last night's ranks up in the top 3 for me. We had a great time.

At around 4:00am we ended up at IHOP for a tasty mix of great conversation and Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-n-Fruity, topped off with some amazing coffee acrobatics by our waitress. Bird regaled us with Barthian theology and Rod inspired us with stories of the new Element ministry that he will be teaching at coming in February. Blo and Jared both reflected on the joys and the pains of ministering in their respective churches, and especially of the burdens and the broken lives of the people they minister to.

We left sometime around 5:30am, and I made it home by 6. As I crawled into bed in the last moments before the dawn I reflected on what great friends I have, and how great God is.

No man is a failure who has friends. - Clarence Oddbody, AS2

The Christmas moot presents have been delivered.

Bird got me Josephus' histories (woohoo!), plus Children of the Promise, to speed me on my Paedobaptistic journey.

Blo got me Mere Humanity, by Donald T. Williams. It is a look at the human condition through the eyes of Chesterton, Lewis and Tolkien. Excellent.

Rod got me Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson.

I, of course, forgot it was Christmas and got them nothing.

I'll drown my guilt at IHOP (our next stop!).

The honoraries (Sha and Stroke) didn't last long, as was expected.

But now Blo is down - he began snoring just as Rod was holding forth on our revisited Paedo / Credo debate.

Left thus without reinforcements, I've been beaten into submission by the Paedo-curious (but still, oddly enough, Credo-practicing) Thinklings. I'm going home to Paedo-baptise my kids (even the ones who have already been Credo-baptised), and then I'm coming to your house to Paedo-baptise you, you and all your household.

This is all Blo's fault . . .

Rod, Bird and Blo are currently frenzying on U2.

I suggested earlier that U2 might not be the second coming of the Beatles. Rod and Bird stared at me incredulously for ten seconds and have spent every moment since then striving to re-educate me.

This is getting brutal. Help me.

Recap:

We're listening to a new worship band that Rod's fronting for us. The band is named Leeland.

We've had wide-ranging discussions on topics such as post-modernism, Biblical illiteracy, the current and somewhat troubling "I'm cool, you're not" trend in the American church, and things we've seen on Myspace. Plus some other things I've forgotten (I'm getting punchy).

We're listening to some vintage King's X now. It go hard.

We've talked about a lot of other bloggers. Probably you. I hope we were nice.

Gotta get back to some vigorous Mooting. More later.

Moot has moved inside.

We've had our first ever Moot-hurl. Something in the mix of the steak and his stogie turned Bird green.

He feels better.

Shame about that big, thick steak Bird had earlier. Rod just asked Bird if it was as good coming up as it was going down.

Gross.

Why am I posting this?

Reporting from Moot (posting on my blackberry)

We're in Jared's parent's backyard. It's a choice Mootspot.

Attendees: Rod, De, Shank, Bird, Stroke, and Blo, who has reconstituted his phantasmogorthic existence and incorporated amongst us as a corporeal being.

For the moment, Blo is real. Let me poke him with my finger.

Real!

We've eaten some excellent steaks, debated Paedo/Credo, enjoyed our favorite non-alcoholic beverages and discussed De's fence-sitting ways vis-a-vis Calvinism.

We also have talked about movies, The Office, Vince Young, and about how the Rockets owned the Spurs tonight.

Some of the attendees have lit their stogies. Everyone has marvelled at Jared's top-notch humidor.

Blo's worried about turning green. Long story.

More later, perhaps . . .

I'm just now gathering up my steakage and other accessories for Moot!

We don't think Liveblogging will be technically possible where we'll be; and, as my wife said yesterday: "It would be pretty pathetic for someone to be reading about your Moot at four in the morning . . ."

True dat. She's a smart woman.

Liveblogging would still go hard. Perhaps IHOP will have wireless at 4am. We shall see.

Be that as it may, Moot is going to rock! We'll hopefully be back with reports and pics sometime tomorrow.

Moot forever!

I found this old post today. It's from a Moot we held 2 1/2 years ago, and this remains one of my all-time favorite Thinklings moments (at least when it comes to ones that were captured for posterity).

I'm reposting this gem below. I give you . . . the Voices of Moot:

---

dateline: May 6, 2004:

Have you ever wondered what your favorite Thinkling (or least favorite one, for that matter) sounds like?

I've uploaded a short mp3 from our last Entmoot. It's a recording of us trying to intro a King's X song for MootCD - it was supposed to be a quick recording of Rod, Bird, Blo and myself saying "Kings X Goes Hard!"

Unfortunately, my subject/verb agreement snafu and the resulting mayhem lengthened the recording - a lot. So, without further ado, I present to you voices_of_moot.mp3. This file is a little over a megabyte in size.

If you'd like to know who is who, here's a handy little guide:

Bird - the one with the great laugh
Bill - the one with no subject/verb agreement
Blo - the one whose voice squeaks as he urges us to rehearse our lines
Rod - the one who wisely thought Bird should say "King's X Goes Hard" by himself with that great Bird voice of his, and who is (naturally) most concerned with Bill's lousy subject/verb agreement.

Do our voices look the way they sound on the blog? Let us know

here's a transcript:

Bill: how - how we gonna do it again? Wait, how - how we gonna do it again?
Bird: King's X goes hard!
Rod: [gesturing to Bird] I think he should say it just like that, all by himself
Blo: it has to be a group thing
Rod: Are you recording this whole thing?
[Bird laughing]
Rod: This is hilarious [garbled - then laughing]
Blo: Wait, wait, we need [voice squeaks] we need to rehearsal one
Bird: We just did!
Rod: That wasn't . . .
Blo: No - all of us
Rod: It can't be rehearsed, it would sound too . . .
Bird: yeah
Rod: . . . it would sound too "yellow gatorade"
Bill: It would sound too fake
Bird: Are we going on three, or are we going right after three?
Blo: No, ya gotta go
Bill: One, two
Blo: Wait, you gotta - how do you do it?
Rod: Wait, on three, or three and then go?
Bill: One, two, three, go. Kings X go hard. . . or "goes" hard. Sorry
[laughter]
Rod: We need a rehearsal, because he can't get the subject-verb agreement.
Bill: [laughing] "goes" hard
Blo: Ok, I can't get these lines right
[laughter]
Rod: Bill's subject-verb agreement's off [laughing]
Bird (I think): "Kings X go hard!"
Rod: "Sometime", "Sometimes" [only die-hard Kings Xers will get this one]
[more laughter]
Bill: Alright, ready? Here we go. Ready? I won't say it, I'll just count.
Blo: You're gonna do - you're gonna say it too.
Bill: Alright. [practicing] "Goes"
Rod: "Goes hard"
Blo: Wait, wait, it's one, two, three and then go.
Bill: Ok. One, two, three.
All: KINGS X GOES HARD!

Here are a few pictures from our latest mini-moot:

Rod and Thor talking while we all sat around waiting for Blo to materialize



Thor responding in disbelief to Rod's contention that Blo is real



Blo, looking evil. Stroke digging the munchies in the background


Jared expounds. Thundergeek listens.
Stroke is apparently frozen in that position.
Blo fantasizes that he is Neil Peart.


I thought I took more pictures than this!!! Oh well. . .

We had a great time.

We had a great little mini-moot last night here in H-town. De, Blo, Thor, Thundergeek, Stroke, Andrew (De's son), and I hung out at Willie's noshing on fried jalapenos, steaks, boiled crawfish, et cetera. The two big topics of the typically passionate Thinklings conversations were The Consumer-Driven Church (as exemplified by the state of modern church worship) . . . and the TV show "Lost."
Hey, we can't always be solving the world's theological conundrums. ;-)

Other highlights:

- Our "surly" waiter who said the word "sir" so often we knew it was either a nervous tic or his preferred way of condescension.

- Blo and Stroke asking various restaurant personnel to change the TV to the NBA Western Conference Final game, only to be ignored time after time.

- Stroke's Valdez-level spill of ranch dressing

- Thundergeek eating, like, a bazillion boiled crawfish. (But not sucking the heads, the wimp.)

- Thor presenting De with a stack of books all on one Psalm (119) for De's Bible study lesson prep.

- Thor's Hawaiian shirt. He truly is a J-Mac/PJ fanboy.

- Blo's now immortal line: "That's a dollar fifty." I haven't laughed so hard in months.

- De adding to his "Jack doesn't rock" blasphemy the tidbit that "Rose and Barnard aren't cool." Someone stop him before he completely loses it.

We talked about a lot of stuff, actually, and a lot of people. If you're interested in knowing, yes, we probably mentioned you too. Blogosphere talk is a staple of our moots these days, including the folks in our precious little Thinklings community. We appreciate all of our readers, especially the regular commenters, and continue to find it fascinating that people seem to enjoy our site so much. But we love y'all.

We finished up the Moot at Fourbucks (sans Stroke and Andrew), where I drank coffee and the other guys drank fruity froo-froo concoctions. We talked more about the Church (building campaigns, small group philosophy, more on worship, more on discipleship, more on "marketing"), some stuff on Christian publishing, and we stayed so late they had to kick us out to close. (And on the front sidewalk some dudes from the Met hassled us about a slam on Max Lucado they thought they overheard. Apparently taking things out of context isn't just limited to the blogosphere. ;-)

It was a great night. I am so blessed to have such great and godly friends. There's nothing like hanging out with close guy friends talking about things that are important, joking about things that aren't, and just sharing the love of Jesus with each other.

De took some pics, so I expect we'll have some photographic highlights of the events sometime soon too.

I bumped into Thinkling-friend Fred ("Thundergeek") on the way to the bus today, so we rode together. We had a great conversation, running the gamut of topics from church-discipline to software development. I showed him a little of Bloo on my laptop, we talked about OpenSource software, etc. In other words, we had a bit of a geek-fest, converting our humble Metro bus into an adhoc venue for a MiniMoot.

It was cool