Reactions

Great 1st Sign – John Lynch returns

Jeromey Balderrama

This is a few days old and came out while I was in LA, but I’d be remised if I didn’t mention this:

BRONCOS_EAGLES_JL_496.jpg
Image from Denver Post

From ESPN:

John Lynch has accepted a pay cut and will return to the Denver Broncos for a fifth season at free safety after pondering free agency or retirement… [Returning]  nearly didn’t happen. Lynch had made his decision to leave, even drafting a letter thanking fans and teammates for his four years in Denver. But when Lynch called Bowlen on Thursday night to inform him of his choice, Bowlen was out for a late dinner.

“And then I woke up thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ I’ve got four kids who are happy here. I’ve found a home here, and I didn’t want to be one of those guys going from team to team. I felt I had earned what I had coming to me, but sometimes you have to step back and look at the big picture. And the big picture to me was: I had to find a way to make this work.”

John, you and your family aren’t the only ones happy.  Denver’s full of fans that are happy you’re coming back and kicking ass for another year. Aside from Shannon Sharpe, Lynch is my favorite Bronco and by far my most favorite active player. Not only is he an amazing player on the field, but a real class act off the field and one of the best guys in all of football.  Best of all, I won’t need to get a new jersey.

RomeyLynch

See the resemblance?  2008 we’re bouncing back!

Liturgical Dancing is lame

Jeromey Balderrama

I offered a response to my friend Andie’s immediate reaction to LA Congress on her blog when she stated:

  • Liturgical dance stupid

**UPDATE** Inspired by the comments, I’d like to amend my previous statement. Agreed, liturgical dance is not in and of itself stupid. The liturgical dance at Congress was farcical, but even then the thought in the back of my head was, “I’m sure they get a lot out of this, but I just find it distracting”. Thusly, I clarify my position and apologize for making a statement that didn’t accurately reflect my position in the first place.

In response I wrote:

I completely agree with your amended position on Liturgical Dance, as well as pretty much agree with your original position of Liturgical Dance. I think people look at their talents and think about how they can serve at Mass. You have people who are good readers, they’re Lectors. You have people who are good musicians, they’re in the choir (and yes I’m fortunate that they extend to accepting drummers). You have people who are good at being ushers, and they’re ushers. Then you have the dancers, which want to find some way to use their talents so someone created Liturgical Dance to give them something to do and they feel a sense of fulfillment by dancing, even though it’s pretty much distracting and lame at the same time.

Not all Liturgical Dancing is bad. When used sparingly, it can greatly enhance a liturgy – like when during the Mass Liturgical Dancers are setting the Alter during Preparation of the Gifts. However, most of the time it’s just overblown and basically has the dancers taking advantage of a captive audience. The worst is “interpretive dancing” during the reflective song after Eucharist. The other part when it was completely out of hand at Congress was when it was used for the readings during the Opening Ceremony. The dancer freaking picked up the Word and started dancing around with it, making me wonder “if the dancer has it, what are the readers reading?!?”. I basically lost my attention and stopped listening to the readings.

LiturgicalDance

Sorry dancers.  What I say may be harsh, and God bless you for trying, but I have to be honest here.  Just ask the people around me that listen to me groan whenever a dancer starts up in the middle of Mass.

Facebook Responds: No more forced invites

Jeromey Balderrama

Last week I wrote about my annoyance of Facebook Apps forcing people to invite their friends before being able to actually use the App.  While I was browsing my feeds, I found the following good news from Caroline McCarthy on WebWare:

[Facebook Apps that do this are] annoying And now Facebook has done something about it. Developer applications must “offer some navigation option to leave the friend invite process,” according to a change in the social-networking site’s platform policy. If an application’s friend-invite page doesn’t contain one of Facebook’s in-house “Skip This Step,” “Cancel,” or “Skip” buttons, it has to contain an alternative way to navigate away from the friend invite process.  Developers whose applications ignore the new regulations reportedly receive warning letters that threaten shutdown if they fail to comply.

Good riddance! I’m glad to hear that Facebook is responding to critics in this way. Their ability to adapt to issues like these solidifies their position as the “anti-MySpace”. Now only if they could do something about the “we have your data forever” problem…