Greetings!

When we last left off, I was rambling about my stunted film career. It was a great blog and we all learned a little something about life and family. But even more interesting is what followed. Immediately after posting that blog, I was struck by something fascinating, inspirational even. And where does one go for such inspiration?

Christian television, of course!

Let me set the scene: For the past few weeks, I’ve been living at my grandparent’s house. My grandmother is recovering from brain surgery and as such my grandfather spends all his time at the hospital with her. As he can’t be here, I take care of the day-to-day stuff like yard work, keeping track of bills, and updating countless elderly people on my grandmother’s condition.

In the mean time I can help myself to all the amenities of the house, namely a fully stocked liquor cabinet, a nice high def. television…and no cable. Yeah, that third thing sorta makes me question the point of the second, but then I remember the first amenity and steadily drink until I forget I have any problems at all. Hooray!

When it comes to available channels, I have the basic offerings (ABC, NBC, etc.) plus a smattering of options involving the Spanish language or God. I do have a fair share of my dvds with me, but sometimes you can’t ignore the lure of Under Siege en español.

But one of the aforementioned God channel is a little network by the name of JCTV. What that stands for is anybody’s guess, but that’s not important. What is important is that when I stumbled across this channel, I stumbled upon something great.

What I found was a little movie called Love Note. It’s a Christian-themed film from the late 80s in which boy meets girl, girl has cancer, boy forces God upon girl, girl dies. Think Nicholas Sparks meets Touched by an Angel. It’s your typical bad low-budget God flick, but it had a little something extra. Something that my drunken self just could not get over. What was that extra something? Well I just so happen to have a clip! While watching this on mute may save your ears, listening just might save your soul. Your call. I’ll list the highlights under the clip.

0:19 – Bass player is feelin’ the holy spirit
1:10 – Who is she looking at?
1:12 – CRAIG BIERKO THAT’S WHO!!!!!
1:49 – Bierko is moved!
1:59 – Mourning his career
4:05 – Slo-mo Bierko with ADR action!
4:20 – CHRISTIAN SYNTH OF PERIL!
4:53 – Best music transition ever

So yeah, this is totally the birthplace of Craig Bierko’s acting career. When I recognized him, I completely lost it. Totally made my night. Once I spotted him, I ended up watching this whole thing. For a movie about cancer and death, it’s pretty hilarious. As you might have noticed from the end of the clip, the score is ridiculous and often wildly inappropriate. There’s a great moment when Bierko comes to visit the girl on a really bad day. You can hear her screaming in pain in the background while the goofiest sitcom music plays over the scene. Even better is the girl’s mother saying “I’ll just leave you two alone,” as if they’re on a little afternoon date and she’s not DYING OF CANCER!

Speaking of cancer (SEGUE!), I’ll finish up this blog with the story of the worst thing I ever said in class. It was junior year of high school and I was a bit of a cut-up. A class clown. An insensitive, disruptive ass, really. Livestrong bracelets were at the height of their popularity at the time. Somehow they came up in conversation as our teacher was just shootin’ the shit with everyone. He casually pulled at his own bracelet and it broke. The room grew unnervingly quiet. It was not to last.

The second that rubber snapped, the words came pouring out of my mouth:

“We all know what that means! Somebody died of cancer!”

All eyes turned on me for a good thirty seconds before we all just decided to move on with our lives and never speak of it again.

Yup. I’m a real class act.