Tom Kim

Gorilla vs. Bear has an old-school hip hop mix of classics you should already have.

You should also check out http://www.says-it.com/cassette/ which was used to generate the customized tape image on GvB post.

Meeting for Worship has gotten increasingly hard. I’m not going along well with the monkey in my mind.

The Stypod has posted a number of tracks by the Adam Green, Kimya Dawsom duo The Moldy Peaches. I find Adam and Kimya to be smart, funny songwriters individually, and together they are more of the same. Make sure you cop their cover of “Little Bunny Foo Foo”!

Okay, so I promised myself that I’m not going to sleep tonight without announcing some changes on my blog.

I’ve given some thought about who the audience of my blog my be, could be and what they might want, could want. When the “Hello, World” for tomkim.wordpress.com was raised, I hadn’t really expected my students and (my own) parents to find it and read it.

Not that that should change things, but it does.

Once summer gave out, I’ve had less time to post regular thoughts, and my work week being what it is, I’ve discovered all over how hard it is for me to squeeze a thought out. You’d think I’d be more sympathetic of my students, but hey — I’ve paid my dues, haven’t I?

Judging from a quick glance at my blog stats… well, I don’t know what the heck that graph means. But I’m just going to take the mindset that I’m going to have to build my readership up from its foundation. I’m going to make more of an effort to keep an audience in mind, and keep the purpose of this blog a little more focused.

In other words, I’m going to try to make this less a vanity site and play more to my strengths when it comes to others.

Now I’m not an early adopter by any means, but among my group of friends and acquaintances, I’m a little bit ahead of the curve when it comes to the float of information on the Net. (Heck, by simply knowing what an RSS feed is, I’m ahead of the curve.)

I guess in the schema of Tipping Point roles, I’m sort of a potential Maven.

So I’m going to have daily (okay, few times weekly, knock on wood) posts that filter out the more interesting stuff that comes across my browser:
- Hear Ye: links to podcasts and music blogs
- Feed Me: links to articles and web sites of interest

And for those interested in the daily minutiae of my life, a daily summary:
- Dear Diary

One of the more enjoyable aspects of my life is the weekly creative writing workshops I have with the Liberties Scribblers. Every meeting has a short 20-minute freewriting session that usually produces from moi embarrassingly humble cul-de-sacs:
- Scribbles

Hopefully, I’ll occasionally rub enough neurons together to post something more substantial. Maybe reviews. Maybe reflections. Maybe even student work (anonymous of course).

Since I know there’s a few students out there who occasionally read this blog, I’m going sneak away to an undisclosed location to rant a little more freely about my classroom shenanigans.

Oh, and in a desperate attempt to generate more interactivity here, I’m going to give away a mid-tri mix CD to my favorite comment. Trimester 2 started yesterday.

I’m being really crabby these days.
I rode my bike to school and back for the first time in a month. Still need to get the gear fixed.
The first regular Bible study in a while, too.
Back to blogging.
The song “Back in the Saddle Again” is stuck in my head.

I have an extended break coming up for the holidays. I’ve got lots of grading to catch up on, but in between papers I’m going to try to clean house and clear away some clutter in several areas of my life.

Expect an overhaul of this site. Coming very soon. Exciting plans. Again.

Last night, I live blogged the election coverage on Stuck in the Middle, the blog of my Middle School:

Blogging the Elections
Election 2006

And I just found out that Donald Rumsfeld resigned.

I’ve been in good spirits all day.

Last night my church held its annual World Missions Conference, which intends to introduce and inform the congregation about the missionaries and missions ministries the church directly supports and encourage us to get more directly involved in this field. In five years, this is only the second Missions Conference I’ve attended — not because I don’t want to know about or support missions work, but because, shamefully, my selfish, quotidian concerns have placed it on the level of “general apathy.”

The last Missions Conference attended was well-organized and straightforward. Missionaries and ministries had their booths, and there were several get-to-know-you breakfasts and presentations. It was all important but, as you might imagine, a little staid.

This time around there was much more hoopla around the Missions Conference. Some of it had to do with the excitement around the new Vision Statement of the church. Some of it had to do with its assertive promotion from the pulpit. But a good deal of it came from its new interactive format: Missionopoly.

The board game Monopoly has probably been co-opted for marketing and educational purposes in thousands of different ways — and for good reason. It’s a familiar brand with easily recognizable and duplicable symbols; it’s fundamental concept is simple and readily grasped; and it’s all about exploration and acquisition. It was perfect, really.

Here’s how Missionopoly worked:

• You had to sign up in teams of 5 or 6. Kids were welcome to participate, and entire families were encouraged to sign up. If you did not have a team, you were assigned to one.
• Each team received a game board, and a bag. (The game board, by the way, looked stupendous).
• Every missionary and ministry had its own booth spread out over two separate floors. In addition, there were several “fun” booths that dealt with aspects of world missions and missions work. Each booth was represented as a square on the game board.
• Each team must travel together to various booths. Each booth had a task to complete. Many of the informational booths had a basket of slips of questions, and the team had to randomly pick three of the questions to ask. Some of the booths had questions that the team had to answer. There were booths that had mini-games of Jeopardy and Snakes and Ladders. There were booths that required you to sample food or drink. There were booths with arts and crafts activities. There was a booth where the group had to take a “passport” photo. Your group also received credit for dressing in the costume of a foreign country. Your group might also be nabbed by the “Secret Police” to be interrogated and watch a video on the persecuted church (the “jail” block on the game board).
• After completing the task at a booth, the group receives a sticker on its game board. The bag was for collecting flyers and handouts from the different booths.
• Every group that collected a certain number of stickers qualified for a random drawing for some gift basket prizes at the end of the evening.

It was really a smashing success. I’ve never seen a Missions Conference better attended and with more enthusiasm. It was wonderful to see kids and families especially come and enjoy and learn. It was wonderful to pastors and deacons in a relaxed and less formal context with their families. People came in colorful costumes, Pastor Ryken cracked jokes with the missionaries, and we got to know new people from the church along with the rest of it. It was really a lot of fun.

I’m going to have to steal this idea sometime.

[More: Tenth Presbyterian Church's blog on its support and vision of missions]

WXPN, the public radio music station loosely affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, has become markedly better this past year or so. It’s been energized by a new facility, new performance spaces, shifts in programming, and a generally hipper, more current playlist. I’ve got to say the best radio in Philly right now is Wednesday to Friday nights when WXPN gives its airwaves over to the vestiges of Philly’s former alt-rock station, Y-100.

I have to admit that I was never really a fan of Y-100 when it was at full capacity on the FM dial. It was rock, but it was corporate rock, and it suffered from the typical annoying business and marketing tactics that’s de facto on commercial radio stations: obnoxious stings, repetitive playlists, moronic shock jock morning shows, and unimaginative music.

And then it was sold off and re-tooled as the demographic flavor of the month changed. 100.3 was turned into The Beat, and a lame alt-rock station became a lame hip-hop station. Fortunately, some of the staff, notably program director Jim McGuinn, used the turnover to stage a grassroots protest and petition drive, which generated enough hoopla to pique the interest of XPN.

Y-Rocks on XPN looks like it’s just pretty much Jim McGuinn, but the brand and creative freedom he’s now provided with allows him to play some gosh-darn cool music. And it might just be me, but this breath of fresh air seems to have wafted throughout the station. XPN has gone, in my book, from a folky, fogey, liberal baby-boomer-ish station to one that’s more risky and relevant. I like, I like.

[More: A Wikipedia article on Y100]