jimmypribble.com/blog

Here endeth the lesson.

All in all, the staycation has been restful, but it wasn’t long before we realized that despite our best efforts and planning, it never felt the same as a vacation away from home. The original plan called for us to spend several days and nights on the boat, but that turned into just a couple of day trips out on the boat. And that turned into a fiasco.

As you might recall, the boat was recently overhauled, so that it would be in perfect working order for the Summer. We spent Wednesday on the boat and everything worked fine, but the overall experience was lackluster and it inspired some lengthy discussions about our commitment to keeping the boat. The biggest single issue is our time. For example, when we bought the boat, I didn’t work on weekends; now I do. It has been increasingly difficult to justify the expense of the boat and the slip, considering how rarely we enjoy those things. Anyway, the discussions left us leaning heavily towards selling the boat at the end of the Summer. And then, to punctuate or protest our decision, the boat died while we were headed home after one of our day trips. Sigh. Fangdango strikes again. So, we had the boat towed to Grant’s shop.

The next morning, Grant called and said the boat was ready. The problem had been a minor wiring issue. We picked-up the boat and drove it back to our slip. And then, while maneuvering through the marina, with its rows of boats that cost more than our house, the engine died again. Kimberly was already in the back of the boat and I leapt to the front to see if we could keep our four-ton, out-of-control paperweight from hitting anything. Kimberly called for help and two gentlemen rushed to our aid. Between the four of us, we managed to walk the boat to our slip without incident. Still, I was apoplectic.

Today we will be taking all of our personal items off of the boat in preparation for its sale. Despite its poor dependability this week, it really is mostly an issue of lifestyle and time. I’ll admit that it is heartbreaking, because it is a beautiful boat. C’est la vie. I’ll probably post an extended for sale ad on this site and link to it from the blog (and craigslist, and eBay).

Enough about the boat. Let me tell you about the most fun day that we had on our staycation. Because we don’t go out often and we certainly don’t go shopping (ugh), Kimberly and I tend to accumulate gift cards. Sadly, many of them expire before we can use them (all part of the gift card scam, you know), but many of the better ones do not. So, on one day this week, we took a fist full of gift cards and spent the whole day running around for free. We saw The Dark Night using free movie passes and we even bought concessions with a whole sheet of “cinema bux” we had picked-up somewhere. Since I am in the middle class, I haven’t bought concessions since I was a kid! Sadly, I know that kids these days don’t buy them, because I worked it out and drugs are cheaper than theater concessions, so why would they? Seriously, who can afford to buy that stuff?

The Dark Night was awesome. Was it the best and most l33t movie EvAR!!!!111!!1one??? Um, no. But it was very good and it worked for me. And yes, Heath Ledger deserves a posthumous Academy Award nomination for his role as The Joker. An added bonus was seeing the trailer for the upcoming 007 flick Quantum of Solace and the trailer for The Watchmen. Now, I knew what The Watchmen was, but I had never actually read it. So, I borrowed a copy from Dave Farabee on Thursday and I have been reading it since. It’s wordy for a comical book, but I’m digging it. I also really liked the trailer over which played The Smashing Pumpkin’s The Beginning is the End is the Beginning, which I had never heard before. It’s a slowed-down version of The End is the Beginning is the End from Batman and Robin, but with modified lyrics. Did you get all that?

Afterwards, we went out to eat for free and then we went on a Barnes & Noble shopping spree where I picked-up the first two seasons of MI-5 (an outstanding BBC TV show called Spooks in the UK), almost completely for free. We have been watching episodes every night since then.

The grand unification experiment with the iPhone has gone very well. All of my major email accounts dump into the phone. Only my work email is left and I will take care of that this week…when I go back to work. Yes, it’s that time again - Sunday afternoon, when the mind invariably wanders towards work on Monday. Monday. Monday…

jimmy

Kimberly and I are on staycation! For those of you not hip to the lingo, a staycation is like a vacation, except that you don’t go anywhere. It sounds boring, but it doesn’t have to be. If fact, I am really looking forward to some of the things that we have planned.

A nice thing about a staycation is that it begins immediately. The first part of a typical vacation is spent packing, boarding the animals, driving to the airport, checking luggage, negotiating the security crucible, flying to your destination, renting a car, driving to the hotel, and checking into a room. When you are finally able to fall back onto the bed, your mind will still be troubled with recovering your lost luggage and how you will get home Sunday night, since the TSA idiots confiscated the key to your Audi. In contrast, my staycation began the nanosecond that I walked out of work on Thursday afternoon. And it began with a very nice treat, indeed. I got home and there was a message from AT&T saying that my new iPhone had arrived and I could pick it up at any time.

The iPhone was a birthday gift from Kimberly to help me dull the pain of no longer just being 40, but now being in my 40’s. Ugh, let’s move on. The iPhone is brilliant. I plan to spend some of this week getting it setup further. We’ll see if this really is the Grand Unification Device that will finally pull together all of my email, contacts, and calendars in a useful way.

Kimberly has spent the first couple of days of her vacation visiting her mom, so I have been hanging-out with friends. On Thursday night, I saw Dave Farabee; on Friday, I went to an event at Hula Hut, celebrating Georgia Crawley’s 20th anniversary at TBA (my previous employer); and on Saturday I spent the whole day with Eric and Andrew at the hangar working on our LeMons race car. Tonight, we are going to a baseball game with Kim’s co-workers.

Much of the rest of the week we hope to spend on the boat. Yes, the boat. I know, I forgot that we had a boat, too. We have spent a lot of time and money getting it in shape lately and except for the stereo, it is finally finished. It is now in perfect condition to use…or to sell. We’ll see. A couple of weekends ago, we took the boat out and tied-up with our friends. They couldn’t believe that we were back out on the water; they had given-up on us. Still, they welcomed us back with open arms and we had a blast.

Judy, Monty, Heidi, Debbie, and Kimmy.

Grant commands the party from his poop deck.

And surprise…Jimmy does something that is unsafe (I’m hanging about 20 ft. off the deck of Grant’s ridiculous four-level fishing boat).

Besides boating, I hope to catch-up on some reading, movie watching, and blogging(!). I might even make a blog entry from the boat on my iPhone, just for the novelty of it. For those of you who have to go to work tomorrow, I’m crying for you. No really, I am. I feel your pain. In fact, I’m off to drown my sorrows. Cheers.

jimmy

I feel a little foolish that I complained about sleep deprivation in my last post. What a joke. That wasn’t sleep deprivation, this is sleep deprivation - while competing in the 48 Hour Film Contest this weekend, I stayed awake for 42 hours straight, not counting 30 minutes that I laid my head down on my desk. Drive until the wheels fall off, right?

For the contest, which takes place in cities all around the country, participating teams congregate on Friday night and are given a genre, a character, a line of dialog, and a prop. They then have 48 hours to produce a film from scratch which contains all of those elements. My team from church decided to take-up the challenge.

Friday

So, on Friday, Jim Shields and I went down to the studio downtown where teams would be given their elements. On the way to the studio we were discussing which genres we wanted and didn’t want. I was very afraid of comedy. Being funny is easy, but writing good comedy is very hard. I was also afraid of the musical genre, but our church is overrun with first-class, professional musicians and some of them were dying for us to draw the musical genre. After-all, for a 4-7 minute film (the limits of the contest), you are really only talking about one song with some setup. The only other one we were concerned about was holiday film. There is nothing hard about it, but a holiday film? Kill me. Yeah, that’s right, I work at a church and I just said kill me to making a holiday film.

Anyway, I remember saying to Jim, “I hope we get horror.” It’s not my favorite genre by far, but it’s just so easy to work with. This was our first contest, after all. I just felt like we could do the most with that genre, given our resources, which includes church property containing substantial wooded areas. To me, woods (at night) = scary. Well, against all probability, Jim drew horror as our genre! I was so excited, I think I made some sort of exclamation during the ceremony. Our other elements were as follows:

Genre - horror
Character - Zach or Zinnia Needham, take-out/delivery driver
Prop - a child’s block
Line of dialog - “That was a good one.”

I had a story immediately. I was coming out of my skin, because we weren’t allowed to call anybody, nor were we able to discuss any ideas until exactly 7pm. All I could tell Jim was, “I have the story. I have the story.” As soon as they released us, we jumped into Jim’s car, I told him my story and then I called the rest of our team, who were waiting for us back at the church offices. Then we rushed back to meet them.

Our team was a mix of church staff and volunteers. The staffers were the usual suspects: Tony Colvin (executive producer, craft services, and boom operator), Alex Jacobsen (gaffer, actor), Jim Shields (producer, director of photography, editor), Lane Fasetta (actress), and myself (writer, director, and actor). Joining us were Jenn Kovacs (camera operator and editor) and Amy Young (hair/make-up artist and actress).

Jim and Jenn get a killer time-lapse shot of a cloud formation on Friday

When we got to the office, we saw that Tony and Karen Colvin had setup an awesome craft services table to keep us fueled for the weekend. So, we grabbed some food and started brainstorming. I outlined my story to the group and everyone agreed that we should use it. One of the nice things about the story was that it utilized our resources almost perfectly. Most of the shooting could be done on our campus to save time and it took advantage of the actors that we had on hand.

Craft Services table at HQ: kettle chips, candy bars, and Red Bull (the really good stuff was in the kitchen)

After a couple of hours of fleshing-out ideas and strategizing for the long shoot on Saturday, some of the team went home to rest, Lane and Jen went shopping for fake blood supplies, Alex and Jim went to the event center to start work on the score, and I began punching-out a script. I was finished by 1 am, which now seems like such a luxurious time of night - plenty of time left to sleep, really not much later than I usually go to bed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sleep, so I just continued polishing the script and even managed to do some storyboard sketches.

Saturday

Everyone arrived at the church offices on Saturday morning looking pretty haggard. Jim brought coffee and pastries for everyone, so we spent some time getting caffeinated, before heading out for our first shots, which would be out on Hwy 71 (which also happens to be the title of the movie). The shooting went well, but in our search for the perfect stretch of road, we almost ended-up all the way out to Marble Falls. So, we spent hours of our time shooting what would amount to being a few seconds of establishment footage. I was getting nervous.

A storyboard sketch and the finished shot.

We regrouped at our offices, picked-up Amy Young, our other actress, and drove to Tony and Karen Colvin’s house for interior shooting. Our office, which is an old stone house built in the 60’s was perfect for our characters’ country house. Unfortunately, it is completely filled with desks and cubicles and no longer looks like a lived-in house on the inside. It would have taken much more work to try to dress the house, so we had to do more remote location shooting. The driving was really taking a toll on our time. Next year, we might work harder to keep the shooting down to one location.

By the time we got to the Colvin home, we were starving. Luckily, the first scene was a dinner scene, so we got to eat, though it was only after an hour of setup and shooting, so the food was stone cold as we ate it. It was during this shoot that I started to unravel a little bit from the lack of sleep. Once the dinner scene was over, I wasn’t directly involved in any of the other shooting. Since these were interior shots, there was a lot of light setup, which just seemed to take forever. Then a thunderstorm rolled-through, which made me nervous because we weren’t filming in order and I was worried about continuity.

Setting up for an uncomfortable dinner.

Anyway, I was so tired that when shooting resumed, I felt myself allowing mediocre takes to slide by as good enough. I just didn’t have the energy to help the actors give me what I wanted. I feel awful that I just let them hang out there without proper direction. Next year, I need to ban myself from acting. It was just too much overhead.

Amy Young in another scene shot at the Colvin home.

After we finished at the Colvin’s, we drove out Parmer Ln. to look for a good “break-down” spot for our characters. On the way out there, I could feel myself falling asleep at the wheel, which is very dangerous. Next year, we need drivers. The break-down scene went well, although I was still in the mode of not having the energy to push for stronger takes. I was mostly walking in circles, trying to stay awake.

Amy Young as Zinnia Needham, coming to the rescue of…

Lane Fassetta and Alex Jacobsen, playing a hip, young couple in love.

Then we drove back to the office for the final push into the evening and night scenes. We took a little break to gather ourselves back together. Once evening came, I got some energy back. The last scenes would be my character’s introduction and the physically demanding final scene, both of which took place in the barn that we have on the church campus. The shots took a long time to setup, but they went well and except for an impressive, mood-setting shot of a cloud formation during sundown that Jim shot on Friday night, I think the barn shots are the best in the film.

A storyboard sketch and finished introductory shot of my character, Zach Needham.

Saturday was a killer 18-hour day of shooting, but the team held together and got the job done. I think it would have been really easy for us to get on each others’ nerves, but that never seemed to happen. There were some mood swings, but overall, everybody held it together and remained professional throughout the shoot. Even at our most exhausted, we were laughing and having fun up until the very end. It was mad fun.

At the very end, as most of us were leaving, Jim and Jenn were just sitting down to begin editing a basic cut of the film, which they accomplished by 3:30 am.

Sunday

I finally slept on Sunday morning, so when I got up to be at a church event at noon, I was excited and awake. I felt great and I was telling anyone who would listen about the contest and how much fun we had filming. After the event ended around 1:30 pm or so, I helped record Alex and Ted Herring perform the original score for the film. Meanwhile, Jim and Jenn were recording ADR with Amy to loop some dialog that didn’t get properly recorded. They also recorded a scream that we didn’t want to do live at 1 am the night before, since the barn is only a few feet from some neighbors.

Anyway, we got the music to Jim by 3 pm and he began to mix it into the film. I had hoped to see a cut of the film, so that I could make suggestions for changes, but Jim said time was too short and that the cut was locked. He still had to mix the soundtrack, do some color correction, render the film and burn it to media. The film was due at Mangia Pizza on Guadalupe by 7:30 pm. So, Alex and I busied ourselves with the paperwork and release forms that were required to be turned-in with the film. When we had finished with that chore, Alex went home to get some well-deserved rest. I stayed behind to go with Jim to the drop-off party.

It was soon after that Jim walked-in to my office and said he didn’t know if we would make it. What? I told him that we had plenty of time. He explained how much there was left to do. I agreed that it would be close, but it should be fine. Also, we didn’t have to burn it to MiniDV (which is the best quality and preferred format of the contest), but we could just burn it to DVD, which wouldn’t take as long. He went back to work and I went and filled my car with gas, since it looked like we might be in a hurry to get downtown. And then the rendering process failed. That’s bad. That process was taking around 20-30 minutes a pop. Jim rebooted his computer and tried again. It would have to work this time for us to make the deadline. For awhile, I was considering going out to the parking lot and warming-up my tires and brakes, thinking it would have to be one of those kind of drives - a personal record to downtown. But even as the clock was ticking down to where even my most insane driving couldn’t get us there in time - the render failed again. It was over.

I lay down on the floor and stared at the ceiling, trying to keep it together as the bitter disappointment washed over me. I couldn’t believe it. Jim came into my office and after awhile, it occurred to him to try rendering the movie on my laptop. He brought his external drive and plugged it into my computer and started the render. It was agonizingly slow, but we just stared at the progress bar as it crawled along, showing the rendering happening frame by frame. Only 13,000 more frames to render. Sigh.

After about half an hour, the render actually completed! Jim burned the film to DVD, grabbed the paperwork, and we jumped in my car to see if we could catch the event organizers at Mangia. Jim managed to get someone on the phone and they said they would be there for another 15 minutes. So, I ended-up having to drive like a maniac after all. Traffic wasn’t as cooperative as I had hoped, but I know I blasted down the the 35th St exit at around 100 mph, so we still made good time. We caught the organizers at Mangia, but we were still an hour and 16 minutes late. Sherry Mills, the event producer said something about “at least you have closure by getting the film here” or something like that. Maybe she was right, but at the time, I just felt defeated. I hadn’t even seen the film!

After a day to reflect, I feel a little bit better. The film will be screened on Tuesday and Wednesday, so for the first time in my life, I will walk into a bona fide movie theater and watch a movie that I made. I’m sure the same thing can be said for most of those on my team. Also, hopefully, we will get some kind of critique, judgment, scoring, or feedback, even though we aren’t eligible for prizes. That would also be of substantial benefit to us and our education as we work to become better filmmakers. But no matter what, I am a very competitive person and to be a DNF just plain stings. Sigh. Builds character…I guess.

The 48 Hour Film Project really is a great event and we will be back next year. I want to thank the cast and crew this year for making it such a memorable and fun event. Jim, Alex, Tony, Jenn, Lane, and Amy - you guys are the best!

Addendum: We just got back from the first screening of our film and the films in our group. It was electric. I think we held our own against the other films, especially on a technical level, though I don’t think we had the best film. It was definitely one of the few films that didn’t take a humorous angle to its genre. In fact, it felt a little out of place. Afterwards, Jim said that next year we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously. Maybe. But I think that sometimes, going for humor is just another way to cop-out of meeting the challenge of the genre. That being said, there was some very funny stuff in the other films tonight and it was great to laugh along with them. I was very impressed with a lot of the work that I saw.

Afterwards, the team had dinner at Chuy’s for a proper wrap party and to celebrate Amy’s birthday. It was a great night.

jimmy

Sleeping is giving in
No matter what the time is
Sleeping is giving in
So lift those heavy eyelids

- Arcade Fire “Rebellion (Lies)”

An unwelcome reprieve today gives me a moment to shed some light on what I have been doing lately. I tried to sleep this afternoon, but it was futile. I didn’t feel like doing anything else and any reasonable estimation of my sleep deficit should have predicted success, but no. It wasn’t dark enough. It wasn’t cold enough. Nothing was settled enough. So, I pretended as long as I could, hoping that at least some part of my body was getting rest. I don’t think I ever really believed it. Fine, on the back of missing an Astros-Cubbies game with my work mates, missing seeing The Police with Rob, a very bad week all around, and a couple of stiff Knob Creek whiskey sours, I give you an update of the last several months.

First of all, I have been posting, just not to my own site. As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Tony and I started a local homeless ministry at church. He created a blog for that ministry and my last post will be copied to that blog. I should have more recent updates posted soon.

(click on the photo to open the site)

Also, I created a blog for the arts ministry at ACF. This should reflect what we have been doing at work, but of course, it is way out-of-date.

(click on the photo to open the site)

And I have another blog site out there, but I’ll get to that later.

I bought another car. I have kept the Miata as my daily driver, but I bought a 1994 Audi S4 from a friend for a song. It fell into my lap and I just couldn’t resist having another go at my favorite car that I have ever owned. A friend told me, “It’s so good to see you in an S4 again. I always thought that Miata looked like some kind of mid-life crisis car. You just look right in an S4.” Really? Oh my God, I love that Miata! I look like some middle aged punter? Ouch. Well, that’s a bloody shame because I’m still going to use that Miata as my daily driver. It uses regular gas, it gets decent mileage, and it has never given me any trouble whatsoever. That car is fantastic!

The S4 (UrS4), which I have named Nessie, is destined to be a garage queen and special transport vehicle on those rare occasions that I need to carry multiple passengers or maybe just on special occasions - like when I want to drive insanely fast or when I want to go broke buying expensive premium gasoline. Though I own three cars that are capable of track duty, I never intended for the UrS4 to see the track. And yet, through circumstances with which I won’t bore you, I found myself in the UrS4 on Harris Hill Road (H2R), which you might remember I visited in a pre-tarmac state here.

Here I am with a student at H2R (click for huge photo).

Here are some posts that I made about my car on another forum:

Nessie
Punch List
Jimmy’s ‘94 S4

In the spirit of the title of this post, I have to tell you that my new car was featured in a film that Jim Shields and I made for church last week. I didn’t drive until the wheels fell off, but I did drive the car over a curbed median while we were filming. The car doesn’t sound so good anymore. I had a light shining in my face while we were filming, so my night vision was gone and the light was reflecting off all of my windows and I could only see out of my front window. When I went to make a U-turn, I turned too early and plowed right over a median. It was all captured on camera. Our crew t-shirts are going to say, “I think Jimmy just jacked-up his car.” What do you want from me? I worked 15 hours that day.

I haven’t had a chance to see what I did to the car, because I’m busy preparing for a track event this coming weekend. The S4 will just have to wait its turn. My track event post should feature footage from the new in-car camera that I have installed in the car. Look for that in a couple of weeks.

Also, once this next track event is over, we will begin preparing for the 24 Hours of LeMons - no, not LeMans, but LeMons. The idea is to run a 24-hour endurance race with a car that doesn’t cost over $500. Crazy? You betcha. The event is in October. I made a team blog here:

(click on the photo to open the site)

Important Note: I wrote most of this post a couple of weeks ago at the end of a horrible week. Things are better now, but I’ll go ahead and finish my story. For some reason, I just didn’t seem to fit into the world very easily that week. I was thwarted at every turn and every success came at a high cost. I had disagreements with my wife, my boss, a co-worker, and a volunteer. I was exhausted and feeling like I was underwater. I had to punt on writing some devotionals for church and I had been asked to somehow help start and lead a third ministry. Sure. I had crashed my new car. By Thursday, I was reeling.

And then Tony walked into the office and told me that Isaiah, the homeless man to whom I am closest, was arrested at DPS when Tony had taken him to get his ID that morning. We had been in the process of getting all of his paperwork in order, so that we could legally pay him for contract work that we wanted him to do at the church. While waiting in line, they arrested him for a very serious felony warrant issued six years ago in South Carolina. He was a fugitive. I felt the floor drop out from beneath me. What were we doing? What good had we done?

Since then, I have a slightly different perspective about Isaiah’s situation. Tony and I have visited him in jail, while he waits for agents from South Carolina to come get him. He is doing well and seems to have a good attitude about what is happening to him. It’s part of a journey that he has to take. Most of us have made mistakes in our past that we wish we could run from, but we just have to walk it out. His life won’t get any better until he does. I’ll post more about this later, probably on the other site.

Anyway, I was done. I just wanted to have a nice day off on Friday to rest and regroup. Unfortunately, I needed to swap around some ceiling fans in the house and install a new one in my office. I’m not much of a household handyman, so you can guess how well that went. I’ll just cut to it - before the day was done, I had shocked myself on some exposed wiring and for the first time in my life, I fell off of a ladder. At the very same time, Kimberly was driving back from San Antonio when the tread on one of her tires separated from the tire carcass. She was thrown into another lane, but recovered quickly and was able to pull over. Luckily, there was a tire store within sight, so she crossed the median to the access road and got a new tire. Like everything else that was happening that week, that could have gone much worse. Thank you, Jesus.

We hadn’t quite driven until the wheels fell off, but last weekend, I had a friend who did. I’ll tell you about that in my next entry.

jimmy

Sometime in November of last year, I had a late dinner with Tony and Alex after work. The weather had already turned cool and the first freeze was coming. Tony suggested that we should maybe buy some blankets and hand them out to the homeless downtown. I loved the idea. My particular ministry is very church-oriented. If you come to my church, you see what I do; if you don’t, you won’t. I’m thrilled to serve the people who come to ACF, but it doesn’t always feel very much like being salt and light “of the world.” Serving the homeless sounded perfect. I had wanted to do more, ever since working on Willie’s House.

About a week or so later, Tony had a remarkable experience which led him to meet a homeless man by the name of Winston. They shared some coffee on a street corner near Parmer and N. Lamar, and Winston gave Tony the lowdown on the homeless in that area. He said there was a camp nearby where most of them stayed. Most of them made money “flying a sign on the rail” - translation: they panhandled on the IH-35 access road, at the intersection of Parmer Ln. That overpass also provided shelter when the weather was really bad. Tony took Winston to a nearby Wal-Mart and outfitted him with a new coat and some other supplies. When they got back to the corner, Tony asked Winston if there was anything he would like to eat. He considered the question for a moment and said, “I could really use me some stew.”

The next night, I went back out with Tony. In the back of Tony’s battered CR-V was a huge vat of stew that we had made from scratch in the church kitchen that day. Tony’s wife Karen had also made some cornbread. We stopped at Starbuck’s and bought a traveler of coffee. While we were waiting, the manager started chatting it up with us. When she found out what we were doing, she gave us a huge bag of their day-old pastries.

I should pause here and explain something about how we were approaching this ministry. Based upon a perfectly solid biblical principal, we weren’t going to tell anyone about what we were doing. The idea was to diminish any motivation except to be obedient to our faith and humbly serve the poor. We weren’t going to tell the church staff, we weren’t going to tell anyone from whom we bought food or supplies, and we really weren’t even going to tell the homeless were serving. Clearly, that wasn’t in God’s plan, because it fell apart quickly and when it did, the blessings spilled forth. It started at Starbuck’s that night. As soon as we buckled and told the manager what we were doing, she gave us food. Over the months, that has happened time and time again. Starbuck’s, Whataburger, and Sonic have either just given away food or given us deep discounts, because we told them the food was for the homeless. I never would have expected that from corporate chain restaurants, but they have been very generous.

Anyway, after we left Starbuck’s, we drove towards the same place on Parmer where Tony first saw Winston. I was a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find anybody, but as we approached Lamar, we saw Winston exactly where Tony had seen him the night before. We pulled into a construction area on the corner and waved him over. He was ecstatic that Tony had kept his promise to come back out. He was so happy, I thought he might start dancing a jig, saying, “I told them you would come back, I told them!” We asked where everyone was and that was when we were first made aware of just how green we were. Winston explained that everyone was probably down for the night. I don’t know why we thought people would be hungry and in need of coffee that late at night. Maybe we thought people were going to bed hungry? In our experience, that’s not generally the case.

We stood and ate some stew with Winston and he told us about some of the other homeless in the area. He went across the street and into the woods, where they camped, but came back saying that he couldn’t find anyone else. At the time, he was particularly worried about one old fella who was sick. He had gout in one foot and the other foot was gangrenous from an incident with a stingray! He wouldn’t let the doctors take his foot, so it was looking grim for him. We never heard about that guy again.

We left Winston and since we had so much food, we decided to just drive down Lamar in the hopes we would find some homeless people to feed. We found one guy, but he had already eaten. He was interested in what we were doing and after we told him our idea, he smiled and said, “Two Guys and some Food.” He got it. No proselytizing. No Bibles. Just food. Just salt. It really was that simple and so, in that moment, he christened our ministry (even though it has grown well beyond just the two of us).

Very soon after that night, we found the real campground in that area and met dozens of homeless. It has been a wild ride so far and we hope to document some our adventures on the Two Guys and some Food website here.

Meanwhile, please pray for these new friends of mine, these brothers and sisters, the lost and addicted, the opportunistic and manipulative, the victims, the thieves, the drunk, the hungry, the down and out, the hobo poets, and the gentle tramps: Winston, Russell “Sparky” Jones, Hugo and his dog Princess, Sherry, Linda, Wilson, Tom, Todd, Isaiah, Grandville, Mustafa, and Suddenly. Yes, I know a fella named Suddenly.

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

- Matthew 25:40 (NIV)

jimmy