On the afternoon of December 31st, while the boys watched Bedtime Stories with their cousin and grandpa, Lisa and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire (2008,R) (ScreenIt! Review).  From the ScreenIt! Review:

As a young man prepares to answer the last question on India's version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" he must answer allegations of him cheating by proving that his life experiences, including growing up in the slums as an orphan, have provided him with the knowledge necessary to answer the questions.

I watched Born into Brothels last year, so I had a feel for what life is often like for kids in India's slums.  I enjoyed the film.  Several of the plot twists weren't hard to see coming (though Lisa turned out to be wrong about the prediction she made), and the love story was a bit over-wrought.  Despite all the tragedy, it was enjoyable to watch the Indian kids' lives, and I couldn't help thinking about my kids while doing it.  I'm kind of puzzled that it received an R rating...it seemed more like PG-13 to me.

I give it 4 out of 5.

I recently finished reading Pontoon by Garrison Keillor, another novel in the Lake Wobegon series.  As usual it was enjoyable light reading.  Since I was often reading it in bits and pieces, I occasionally had a hard time distinguishing between the multiple female protagonists.

Santa managed to get 4 tickets to the December 28 game between the Steelers and Browns and put them in our stockings, so we made a stop off in Pittsburgh on our way home to MI after spending Christmas in NC. 

We arrived Saturday evening at the Omni William Penn Hotel downtown.  Here are a couple of photos:

We took a walk Saturday night and had dinner at Cafe Milano (there was a flyer in the hotel lobby).  Sunday morning we got up, failed to get a family picture in the hotel room without Finn blinking from the flash, had breakfast at Starbucks (which we had scoped out the night before), and then walked down to the stadium.  The weather was pretty good…windy and not nearly as warm as the day before but generally comfortable since our seats were in the sun.

Unfortunately, the game was meaningless since the playoff fates of both the Browns and Steelers were already set, but the Steelers coach had decided to play his starters to win anyway.  It was fun to be at the stadium with the enthusiastic crowd enjoying the domination by the home team.  The low point was the 15 minutes Big Ben spent on the turf before being carted off with a concussion just before half time.  Here are some more photos.  We're sporting our jerseys in the first photo: mine (Mwelde Moore) received this Christmas, Lisa's a Jerome Bettis that we recently picked up at Salvation Army here in Midland, and the boys wearing the jerseys (Polamalu and Roethlisberger) that they received at Christmas a year or two ago.

That last photo gives a good view of the Steelers hats Lisa made.  After the game we walked back to the hotel and then walked to McCormick & Schmick's for dinner.  Monday morning we got up and hit the road for Michigan but not before shopping for Steelers-gear at Goodwill and Walmart.

Here's some video:

I'm thinking we might try to make this the first of an annual pilgrimage to Pittsburgh for the Moore family.

The water works were engaged a couple times recently, both football-related...

First as I read this article "Gainesville State high school football gets the best gift of all, hope" while on the road from NC to PA after Christmas and again while observing Browns and Steelers players gather at mid-field to pray together after the game on Sunday.

I was surprised to hear today that my alma mater Lipscomb University overcame a 21-point deficit to surprise the Indiana Hoosiers with a 74-69 loss on their home court this past Sunday (link).  Lipscomb's coach Scott Sanderson (son of Wimp Sanderson) said "[t]here is no question that this is the biggest win in the school history."  Maybe...but I'm not sure an early-season upset win over a struggling Indiana program not in its prime is without question a bigger win than their NAIA national championship in Kemper Arena in 1986.  I get it, though...you can hardly blame Sanderson if in the heat of the moment he might slightly exaggerate the importance of this victory after coming close to pulling off other upsets in recent years since moving from the NAIA to NCAA (e.g. South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Purdue, Kentucky).  Then today Lipscomb sent out a "Special Announcement" email to alumni with the headline "BISONS STAMPEDE THE HOOSIERS," and I started to think that we might be getting a little too excited about this win.  I'm reminded of the quote attributed to Landry, Paterno, or some other respected football coach regarding touchdown celebrations that are embarrassingly exuberant: "Act like you've been there before."

(h/t: Elrod)

30 Dec 08 Update:
"Special Announcement" Fail: the link in the email was broken so they had to send out a correction.

A few weeks back Elliot played several songs on piano at a crafts show at the Midland Center for the Arts. Here is Rudolph.

Not that I’m a huge fan of Rick Warren (though I admire his reverse tithing and work against poverty and A.I.D.S.), but it seems kind of lame that so many are complaining (link link link link link link) about Obama inviting Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.  It reminds me of pro-life groups whining about Warren and Obama partnering to fight A.I.D.S.

Waldman explains why he respects Warren here: link

Update (17 Dec 08):

This firedoglake post (link) is exactly what I'm talking about.  To me, calling Warren a "warmongering torture apologist" is from the same playbook as saying that Obama ♥ infanticide.

Another update (17 Dec 08):

Raushenbush also doesn't have his knickers in a twist (link)

Update (18 Dec 08):

See what I mean: link

Tonight I watched Charlie Wilson’s War (2007,R) (ScreenIt! Review).  From ScreenIt!:

A party-going congressman, a bitter and sardonic CIA case officer, and a wealthy Texas socialite set out to help Afghan rebels fight off invading Russian forces, all in the hope of stemming the spread of communism in 1980.

It was enjoyable enough and the subject of Afghanistan definitely had more resonance after reading Khaled Hosseini’s books…but not too much else.  I give it 3 out of 5.

Last night I tried the new “name tags” functionality in Google’s free photo management software (Picasa).  Here is a link to a description: link.  It goes through your photo collection and finds all the faces.  It groups the faces it thinks belong to the same person and and allows you to relatively easily assign a name to each face.  In the past I manually tagged photos in Picasa but gave up because it was so time consuming.  This is a nice way to do it quickly and semi-automatically.  It only works on photos you’ve uploaded to your web album, not the photos that are just on your local computer.  It’s cool regardless.

For the benefit of all of the ladies, here is a link to a slideshow featuring photos of yours truly: link

I think I'm going to try to start documenting the occasions when I get choked up because those are special moments…

This afternoon I teared up as I listened to Frank Schaeffer do the same during his interview on Fresh Air as he related stories of his father's (Francis Schaeffer) struggle with depression including once when his father gave him a hug and told him that he felt like killing himself but was going to struggle on…in part because he loved Frank so much.

link