Mariners Church Puns

TLDR: Stage/Crowd angle:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBBnOHKfCeo

Every time I watch an Inside Out live recording, I find myself scanning the footage for someone in the background holding a video camera. It gives me hope that another angle exists and will one day surface. I even try to track down the identity of that person. The effort rarely pays off. This time it partially did.

About 10 years ago a stage-right angle/crowd of Inside Out's 1990 set at Mariner's Church in Irvine, CA (2nd to last Hard Stance show) surfaced, but it was just the song Sacrifice. Five years ago the full set from that angle surfaced. In it, I noticed someone behind the kit holding a video camera. Eight months ago this behind the kit angle surfaced courtesy of Sean from Yuckmouth, and judging by the fact that it only has 40 views as of this writing, I'm gonna go ahead and call this a new find. I'm still not sure who filmed it and if the master recording is still out there, but at least we have this. The setlist contained two unreleased songs: Nowhere to Turn and Empty Days.

Kit angle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6509_6cYI04

Stage/Crowd angle:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBBnOHKfCeo
Setlist:
Burning Fight
Undertone
Sacrifice
By a Thread
Nowhere to Turn
Empty Days
Redemption
No Spiritual Surrender
Thanks to Evan Jacobs, Aaron Silbeman, Rob Haworth and Dave Mandel for helping me pin down the date of this show. March 2, 1990 at Mariner's Church. It looks like Inside Out was a late addition.

https://youtu.be/oaEIKvwHPJk

I always took Marin Mema with a big grain of salt. He claims that this report/documentary or whatever you want to call it, is ironclad with facts.

Is it?

I do think a lot of seems plausible.

The ancestors of the Albanians were living in the Balkans long before the Slavs arrived (around 700 AD) so it is probable that christian "albanian" churches did exist.

When the Slavs arrived they surely didn't convert on the spot. It could have taken a century until a big chunk would have been baptized.

So "albanian" churches would have existed far longer and far more numerous than slavic ones.

You have churches built upon Roman temples or churches turned into mosques and vice versa. So we can safely assume that a lot of those albanian churches might have been converted.

Gotta appreciate Alex's make-belief depictions of the average conservative

REPOST FROM FACEBOOK, ALL CREDITS TO MAGGIE LIN

Hey y’all! The amazing Maggie Lin made a post way back for things to do around Irvine/LA. I updated it a little bit to keep it current. Take a look and explore!! Message me if you'd like me to edit anything on the list. 🙂

KBBQ

• Mo Ran Gak

• Shik Do Rak

• Cham Sut Gol

• Star BBQ

• Mr. BBQ

• Gen

• Korean House Barbecue Buffet

• Red Palace

• BBQ Night (love this place)

• Red Castle (Garden Grove, when you're too poor for kbbq cus them tuition be like give me all your money LOL)

• All That BBQ (Korean BBQ)

• I Can BBQ

• Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong

Buffet

• Kyoto Buffet (sushi on point)

• Teppanyaki Grill Supreme Buffet

• Asia Buffet

• Sake 2 Me (AYCE sushi)

• AYCE Sushi HB

• Hello Sushi

• Sushi Pop

• Dada Shabu Shabu

Good Eats

• Pepper Lunch (Irvine)

• BCD Tofu House

• CoCo ICHIBANYA

• HiroNori Craft Ramen (Irvine)

• La Sirena (Laguna Beach)

• Chan Chan Food House (please go it's so good)

• Lowkey Poke Joint

• Poke Haus

• Kula Revolving Sushi Bar (the conveyor belt sushi experience LOL)

• Koko's Chicken (soy wings are the best; kinda never wanna eat KFC or Popeyes again)

• Pho Lu

• Union Market (aesthetic food)

• Brodard/Brodard Chateau (best spring rolls/summer rolls in OC)

• Boiling Point (hot pot)

• Red Flame (hot pot)

• Garlic & Chives

• Crazy Rockn Sushi

• Mae's Cafe

• Boiling Crab (crawfish craze)

• In-n-Out (obviously)

• Seafood Cove (dimsum and seafood!)

• Sushi Town

• Jumpa Thai

• Halal Guys

• Doner G

• Kita Kata

• Urban Seoul 2.0

• Lanta Thai

• Sutha Thai

• Kaisen Sushi

• Buffalo Wild Wings at the Block (lively af)

• Orange Hill (beautiful nightscape)

• HMart (bomb af Korean food especially the ddukbokki and kimbap)

• Anaheim Packing District (what can I say? omg everything is bomb af)

• Old Spaghetti Factory (Newport area, bomb af pasta and Italian food)

• Din Tai Fung (good soup dumplings)

• Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai (omg love the ramen)

• Fogo de Chao (super expensive but when you have the money to spend omg)

• Raising Canes

• Yard House (go to Happy Hour)

• Habit Grill

• Jollibee

• Nimarin Thai Food

• Commissionary

• Sharkeez

• Annapurna

• Adya (In UTC, fast food style Indian food)

• Green Chilis

Boba/Dessert

• Omomo (Probably one of the highest rated boba shops in Irvine)

• Ding Tea

• The Alley (in Irvine Spectrum)

• Cauldron Ice Cream (liquid nitrogen icecream in bubble waffle cone)

• 7Leaves (Vie

In the frozen land of Icewind Dale, a magical Iron Maiden was unhearted, in mysterious circumstances. The curious object, brimming with magical powers, was paraded around the ten Towns, attracting many curious.

In each town, the Maiden spoke, pronouncing a cryptic rime. A riddle, said some, or a prophecy, thought others.

In truth, they were curses. Ten curses that now afflict the ten towns.

The Accursed Iron Maiden is an ancient artefact of untold powers, and its curses must be broken before the object can be defeated once and for all. If left alone, it will spread more ill around the world.

I propose a solution for each curse, but only you know your players, you should change the right answer to something you know will work for you. If your players come up with something else especially clever or original, maybe let it work too.

Note: I use the Ten Towns location because it's funnier that way, but there is nothing special about them, and you can adapt any number of riddles to any location in your campaign.

#Caer-Dineval: Wasted Years

The Iron Maiden said

From the coast of gold, across the seven seas

Travelin' on, far and wide

But now it seems I'm just a stranger to myself

And all the things I sometimes do, it isn't me but someone else

Since then, all the people in town were replaced by copies. The copies look exactly like the originals, but act by instinct and are terrible at adapting to changes.

They’ll act normally at first, but start repeating actions and sentences if observed long enough.

The copies don’t realize they are copies. All they know is that one day they found a pile of 100 gold coins on the shore. (the city population, 1 coin for each person replaced)

As far as they know, nothing else happened and they’ll keep repeating it’s all fine.

A possible solution is diving into the lake, where the players will find the real citizens, alive but trapped in some way, maybe protected by some sort of undead or sea monster.

#Bryn Shander: Can I Play With Madness

The Iron Maiden said

Can I play with madness?

The prophet stared at his crystal ball

Can I play with madness?

There's no vision there at all

Can I play with madness?

The prophet looked at me

Can I play with madness?

He said you're blind, too blind to see

Since then, terrible misfortunes started befalling the cities. Monster attacks, accidents, sudden disappearances.

Until a prophet arrived in town, a

I'm talking musketeers and the golden age of piracy, all the things you wouldn't encounter in classic middle-ages dnd setting (Big thanks to DJTilapia and MasterODungeons and flavoredpickle and FirstChAoS and DavidECloveast!)

1.A pirate is smoking a pipe leaning on a powder keg.

2.A mad lamplighter tours the town at dusk. If interrupted, Will-o'-Wisp will fly out the nearest street lights to protect him.

3.War veterans equipped with flintlock pistols are using your favorite tavern as a shooting range

4.An old overturned ship serves as a layer for gunpowder oozes, that explode if set on fire)

5.A giant spider has made it's layer on ship's shrouds.

6.A band of whalers returned from the sea, and are looking for a fight with locals

7.Noble lord has returned from a hunt with a pray. The pray still seems to be alive.

u/MasterODungeons

8. A small explosion is heard and smoke rises from a nearby alchemists.

u/DJTilapia

9. An errant knight appears, wearing metal plates from head to toe.

What? Plate armor was a Renaissance innovation, appearing centuries after gunpowder was introduced to Europe.

Fine, fine. How about these 16th century plot hooks:

10. A clockmaker is enslaving brownies and imps to work for him, as his eyes are failing him. He'll pay large bounties for any the PCs bring him, but hopefully they'll try to shut him down instead.

11. A sea captain believes, based on an ancient scroll, that there is an unknown continent a thousand leagues across the Endless Ocean. He believes his ship, Apeiron, can get there, but he wants some heroes for magical food and water and/or protection from sea monsters.

12. The town has been occupied by a mercenary company. They're paying for the beer they drink - for now - but if no one hires them or drives then off soon, things could get ugly.

13. A gnomish tinker has built a contraption out of an olive press that, she claims, can replace a scribe's pen somehow. While she's probably just insane, the local Scriveners Guild would like you to steal or sabotage her device.

14. After a thousand years of peaceful obedience to church authority, a new interpretation has appeared. No ordinary heresy, it's attracting peasants and nobles alike. This could mean war!

15. There's a city under siege, or quarantine, but the wealthy merchants there will pay in gold for good smuggled in (or out). A few kegs of powder could make the PCs very wealthy indeed!

16. Fed up with petty crime, the local lord has decided to form a p

I also made this as a video, here's the link for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/PD5FWqy3YEw

There’s just something beautiful about the underdog stories that football creates. You can look at competitions like the FA Cup, which this year pitted 8th tier Marine AFC, a team that some fans can watch from their own backyard, against Tottenham, a team that employs Gareth Bale, who is on a contract worth over £30 million a year, and recently built a £1 billion stadium. Of course, Spurs prevailed 5-0 but the game personally raised a few questions. Namely, what’s the most lopsided matchup possible in football?

On an international scale, the answer is neatly laid out. FIFA has a world ranking system that tells us who is the best and worst team out of the 211 member nations - Belgium are the best and San Marino are the worst (At time of writing, 5/4/21). But for club football, let’s just say it’s a little more difficult. The best is easy - the Club World Cup, though essentially a formality in prior years having been won by the European representative 13 of the last 14 years, tells us the official answer of the best football team from the year (it will be moving to a 4-year format soon, so the answer won’t be quite as easy in the future) - for example this year that team is Bayern Munich.

However, when it comes to the worst, there’s quite a bit to sort through. There are a LOT of teams, and I mean a LOT. Fortunately, we can greatly diminish that number by only looking at teams which (I think) are eligible for continental competitions, and hence the Club World Cup - the competition that the team I conclude to be the worst has to technically be able to reach.

Wikipedia has articles that identify the men’s league systems of 157 nations (we’re excluding women’s football from this question - fun fact though the Northern Mariana Islands’ women team plays in the 2nd tier of their league system), but it should be acknowledged that it doesn’t include such records for some notable countries, for example the (Again, at time of writing) highest ranked African nation in Senegal. The Senegalese league does exist, Google even covers it - shoutout to Teungeuth, who currently top the league (At time of writ- you know what, just assume lots of info might be a little out of date OK) which doesn’t appear to be breaking any records for excitement with just 1.86 goals per game for the first 80 games of the season.

[If you want excite

Back in the mountains, my folk were, for the most part, Freewill Baptists in their religious beliefs. As I was trying to describe it to Momma just yesterday; take the most hardcore Jesuit mindset, and then take all the fun out of it. Those guys would be considered party boys by comparison.

Those of the Freewill persuasion took a literal interpretation of Scripture and ran with it.

No dancing, because that kind of physical closeness could lead to unclean thoughts and actions (had those anyway).

No going to see a movie, even the most banal Disney production, because you would be promoting a sinful industry.

No playing marbles for keepsies (we Boys all chose to ignore that one - there are limits), because it was gambling.

Fishing on Sunday? - you might as well run off with your neighbor’s wife (we ignored that one, too, when we could get away with it. Gramp did, too, from time to time. He was a maverick).

No face paint. Makeup was for whores.

Etc., etc.

The only ones I know of who were worse were the snake-handlers. Even the Baptists thought they were fucking crazy.

Early on in Basic at Parris Island, we found that we would be permitted to attend Sunday Services. We needed religion. The Marine Corps said so. And, judging by some of the guys I knew there, Marine recruits probably needed it more than most.

So most of us jumped at the chance, even some I knew for a fact had “no preference” on their dog tags (I had “Bhuddhist” on mine. I could be a smartass. I paid for it regularly).

There were a few Catholics, but most elected for the Protestant Service, being as it was the one they were most familiar with.

My first one was a revelation to me: orderly and sedate; very low-key.

No sweating, screaming, red-faced preacher with his coat off and tie loosened doing his damndest to work himself into a stroke or heart attack terrifying the assembled Congregation into apoplexy with vividly rendered descriptions of his own personal expectations of what Hell was going to be like if they didn’t stop listening to that “Devil Music” (Elvis and Jerry Lee). Dolly & Porter, and Flatt & Scruggs, were acceptable - just. Country and Bluegrass were mostly ok. But not that rockabilly stuff.

Or didn’t stop making book on how long it would take for Brother Johnson’s crazy daughter to brain her new husband with a skillet.

Or stop making change out of the Collection Plate.

Or, by God!, if some of ‘em didn’t stop votin’ Democrat!

I know that for some people, finding another church might not be something you're interested in anymore or that the process feels daunting. Hopefully this can be helpful for others who might be ready to look. So for those of us who are attending other churches, please provide any recommendations that you know of, and where it's located, to help others find a new spiritual home.

EDIT: I'll be adding everyone's recommendations below (by region, in alphabetical) so it will be a consolidated list. Thanks in advance to anyone who can contribute!

~~California~~

Bay Area:

• 3 Crosses (Castro Valley)
• Abundant Life Christian Fellowship (Palo Alto)
• Awakening (San Jose)
• City Church (SF)
• Livingwater Church (Berkeley)
• Oakland City Church (Oakland)
• Reality SF (SF)
• Resonate (Hayward & Fremont)
• Westgate Church (San Jose)

LA:

• Berean Community Church (Irvine)
• Calvary Church (Santa Ana)
• The Garden Church (LA)
• Mariner's Church (Irvine)
• Mission Bible Church (Costa Mesa)
• Newsong Church (Irvine)
• Newstory (LA)
• Pacific Crossroads Church (LA)
• Reality LA (LA)

SD:

• Grace City Church (SD)
• Kairos Church (SD)
• Lighthouse Bible Church (SD)
• Redeemer’s Grace Church (SD)

~~ Pennsylvania ~~

• North Way Christian Community (Pittsburgh)

~~ Texas ~~

• Austin Stone (Austin)

The funeral director was asking us what we think Mum should wear in her casket.

Mum always loved to wear sarongs (fabric wraps that go around the torso and drape downward a bit like a long skirt would), so my uncle suggested that she wear a sarong in there.

The funeral director looked a bit confused, as did some of our family members, to which my uncle added:

"What's sarong with that?"

I started laughing like an idiot. He was proud of it too. The funeral director was rather shocked. We assured her, and our more proper relatives, that Mum would've absolutely loved the joke (which is very true).

His delivery was perfect. I'll never forget the risk he took. We sometimes recall the moment as a way help cushion the blows of the grieving process.

--Edit-- I appreciate the condolences. I'm doing well and the worst is behind me and my family. But thanks :)

--Edit-- Massive thanks for all the awards and kind words. And the puns! Love 'em.

I would have a daughter