The Royce Files

"Give it to me, Bucky!" exclaimed a number of people along with myself at the Lowry Theater in downtown St. Paul. We were only 1 number away from a bingo during the interactive show We Gotta Bingo . The prize we were after was a sweater donated by Bill Cosby and the opportunity to sit on the Bingo Champion Throne. The premise of this show is pretty basic: 2 churches must come together to raise money to renovate the others' church due to one being accidentally torn down. On top of all that they are ethnically diverse- Italian and Irish- and have a shaky relationship with one another. In order to raise money they throw this Bingo shebang dinner in which audience literally is a part. The show includes live music including a polka band that covers OutKast in addition to beer barall polkas. The whole space of the Lowry Theater is decked out to look something like a fraternal hall with pictures and memorabilia from ages past. Even the bathrooms had their special decor. The men...

She's been dead for weeks yet we get round the clock coverage on the proceedings on CNN. What's next? My colleague James gave the most eloquent description of this perculiarity that CNN decided to champion as news. He titles this programmming decision as: the who cares where the rapidly rotting corpse of a psuedo-celebrity is going to be buried, because people are so self centered and needy of other peoples infamy that they will let their "loved" ones decay into a slimy puddle of gelatenous goo before they would consider anyone else's feelings including the aforementioned maggot ridden cadaver show. I don't think you can an any more dead on than that. Pork bellies are more noteworthy that this pseudo-celebrity tripe.

This weekend I had the privledge to see most of Team Unglaublich of Intramural Glory fame in action. In order to do so I had to fight my way through the biggest and baddest snow storm of the year. Fortunately my father loaned me a 4WD vehicle so I had the power to defeat this weathery adversary. With the weather bringing disorder to the whole metro area, only about half the team showed. The Ledge was particularly enthralled by this predicament. Kevin and Coach McCue could only wonder why the others weren't hungry enough for glory. Due to the lack of hands available I was drafted off the sidelines to run the camera. So be looking for some of my footage out there soon, I hope. I don't think I did tremendous camera work. It was awkward to say the least. I may have even missed a few glorious shots. I certainly hope the Ledge or Owen aren't going to hunt me down and rough me up. For the avid fans of Intramural Glory look for the new episode shortly. The production crew is a lit...

Grim prospects for those without a father. Seems there's a bunch a research out there that studied effects of life without father. Nothing remotely positive: drugs, child abuse, poor school performance, emotional and behavioural problems. Looking at the blurbs from these father studies is a bit overwhelming. No doubt there are exceptions. Why there must be an amount of orphans out there who have succeeded like Dave Thomas of Wendy's fame. I am not about to bemoan fathers or mothers or whatever parental or lack of parental involvement that exists in one's life. Instead I am promoting intervention in the form of mentoring. No this isn't trying to get the father and mother back together again but intervention in the childrens' lives. It's like reducing those risks. Check out this short article about it in Relevant.

Has individualism created a weaker church? This of course is a yes and no answered. This article from Relevant Magazine Online and proffers the question-"did Paul have a home church?" People value salvation and grace and all those wonderful blessings but the church is the socks you get at Christmas from Aunt Ginny. That is a great analogy to the situation. Do you value socks? Probably not. We get Jesus but don't think the Church is essential. I don' think that aligns with the teachings in the Bible. So don't regard the Church as your pair of Christmas socks.

I n my mind Budweiser is not the king of beer. Instead I bestow that title to Phil. Whenever I drink a fine ale or pilsner or lager or stout, I think of Phil looking down and smiling upon my and giving me beer drinking pleasure. Now Phil is by no means a drunk. As far as I know he is regularly sober. A few weeks ago I decided to make an offering to the "king of beer." I purchased some fried chicken and fixings and laid them before Phil. He offered me beer. Good beer. I think it was a brown ale of sorts but it was good, very good. I wonder if someday someone somewhere will brew a beer and place Phil's likeness on the bottle. Call it something like "Lucious Phil's Delight." Speaking of naming beers, my other beer drinking aquaintance, James, made beer once and he spilled some of the wort on his foot and got 2nd degree burns. He ended up calling the brew Hot Foot Brew.

There is the Stanley Cup, the World Cup, the Sam McGuire Cup (for you Gaelic games fans), and the Nextel Cup but now the Vatican has added another sporting cup to the mix- The Clericus Cup . The only stipulation for this soccer competition is that you are a Catholic seminarian, clergy, or lay minister. I think you also need to live around Rome. Some of the teams seem to be organized around national origin. The Swiss Guards will be fielding a team, too. Italy's largest insurance company is providing sponsorship. I am not sure if clerical garb will be worn during the matches. Competition begins this week with the final in June. The Vatican also has other footballing ambitions which appear to involve fielding a side to compete in Italy's top league, Serie A. It probably would be a great boon to them since football is akin to a religious institution in places. The church and in particular to Catholic flavor has been involved in soccer before. Celtic and Hibernian in Scotland we...