If you’re plugged into the YouTube community in any way, you’ve probably heard of The Fine Bros. Benny and Rafi Fine are two brothers who create tons of regular, high-quality content for their YouTube channel, TheFineBros. They’re responsible for their hilarious Spoilers series, the first transmedia sitcom MyMusic, Last Moments of Relationships, and more. Today, I want to feature the first Fine Bros series I ever came across and their claim to fame, the React series.
There are actually multiple React series now. It all started with a series of videos called Kids React where the Fine brothers would show popular YouTube videos to children and record their reactions. The series found huge success and has now spun off into four different series: Kids React, Teens React, Elders React, and YouTubers React. Each series releases a new episode every two weeks, with Kids React and Teens React alternating on Sundays and Elders React and YouTubers React alternating on Thursdays. All of these videos are up to view on the Fine Bros YouTube channel.
Like I said before, the first Fine Bros video I ever saw was a Kids React video. I’m not exactly sure which one it was, but I remember that I appreciated its humor and honesty. The Fine Bros don’t coach or censor the people they interview. They simply show them something they find noteworthy and record their reactions. The result is hilarious, real, and sometimes touching, and it brings people back week after week.
The subject matter of the videos has begun to vary with time. Originally, the Fine Bros just showed popular YouTube videos like Nyan Cat and recorded reactions. Now, they show movie trailers, popular web trends like The Harlem Shake, major news stories, and more. There are a couple episodes of Kids React where kids are shown old technology and asked their thoughts on it. Every once in a while, the Fine Bros make a React video concerning an important modern issue to expose their viewers to different views on them, and those videos are their most popular.
It’s also cool to see the same interviewees week after week. Some of the original Kids React cast members have grown up and been promoted to Teens React. One even moved up to YouTubers React! You only get brief glimpses into these people’s lives, but it’s fun to see what they think about different things and to decide whether you agree or disagree with them. It’s a really great concept, and the Fine Bros have found huge success with it.
The React Series is actually expanding off of YouTube. The Fine Bros will continue with their usual React schedule online, but they will also be creating a new TV show for Nickelodeon called React to That. It will be similar to Kids React, but it will have some new twists thrown in. I’m excited to see the Fine Bros get some well-deserved mainstream recognition online and elsewhere, and I’m looking forward to see how the new show turns out.
The Fine Bros have been making React videos for a long time, and there are a ton to check out on YouTube. Give them a look and let me know what you think of them. Come back next week for my review of The Fault in Our Stars!
Back in January, I wrote a blog post about being tired and how to deal with it. That blog post was about the bad kind of tired. You know, when you’re not taking care of yourself as well as you should or you’re stressed out about something, and it’s just draining you. The kind of tired I was when I wrote that blog post. I still agree with everything I wrote in that post, but I recently realized that it didn’t really tell the whole story.
Lately, I’ve been tired. At the end of the day, I’m completely exhausted. I just don’t have any energy left. But it’s not because I’m stressed or not taking care of myself. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I’m less stressed and more healthy than I’ve been in a long time. This tiredness comes from something completely different, and I consider it to be a good thing. Today, I want to talk to you about what I call the good kind of tired.
At first, that probably sounds like a strange phrase. Isn’t being tired a bad thing? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. Think about some of the best and most exciting times in your life. They were probably also some of the most tiring. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t get plenty of sleep and take care of ourselves, and I’m certainly not saying that having plenty of energy is bad. I’m just saying that being tired isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.
Like I said before, I’ve been tired lately. Not all the time. I start my days with a good deal of energy. I have enough energy to run in the mornings and start my work day off alert and prepared. But by the time I leave at 5:00, my energy level is basically zero. It’s not because I spend my day stressing out or pushing myself too hard. It’s because I spend my day doing something I love and putting everything I have into it. That is the good kind of tired.
To me, there are very few better feelings than the feeling of accomplishment I get after a long, hard day of doing the Lord’s work. When I know for a fact that I’ve put my all into what I’ve done, and I can be proud of it. I love the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual release I feel when I look back at the end of the day and say, “I’m happy with what I’ve done today.” In the words of a tweet I posted last week, “I am the best kind of exhausted.”
I like to think that each of us has something or even multiple somethings that make us feel this way. It could be a job, spending time with your loved ones, a particular sport, your relationship with Christ, or any other number of things. But we all have something that makes us feel alive. Something makes us feel more whole even as we put more of ourselves into it. Something that takes all that we have but ultimately makes us who we are. Something that makes us the good kind of tired.
If you have something like that in your life, enjoy it! And share it. I would love to hear about it. If you don’t, find it! God has made us all with different passions, and maybe you just haven’t found yours yet. I’m so thankful that I found mine at such an early age, and that I’ve stuck with it all these years. We all need something that makes us feel alive. Let’s enjoy those somethings today and thank God for them.
Hey, friends! I’m back again for another life update, in case you missed anything. I hope May has treated you as well as it’s treated me, because I’ve had a great month. Graduation, moving home, and going back to work are just a few of the exciting things I’ve been up to in the month of May. Let’s get started!
By the time May started, school had already started to wind down. I was getting to the end of all my class work and mostly just waiting around until graduation. I received the Moore Religion Award at the Honors Convocation, which was a really huge honor and blessing. Other than that, school was pretty boring in May.
I also got the honor of filming the wedding of two of my friends, Caleb and Ashwyn Seabolt. They had a beautiful wedding with a ton of people, and I was really thankful to be a part of it.
I spent my last couple of weeks at school spending as much time with my friends as possible. We had a great time. The night before graduation, we all got together with our families for one last big dinner. We all wore t-shirts representing the next step in our lives and had fun just enjoying each other’s company.
Then the big day rolled around: graduation. I was nervous, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. They called my name, I walked across the stage and got my diploma, and then it was over. I had graduated. Once I finally had the diploma in my hand, it hit me that it was really over. It was a really scary and exciting feeling at the same time. I am no longer an undergraduate!
I didn’t waste any time between school and work. After a couple weeks of taking it easy, I was ready to be busy again. And my pastors certainly made sure I was. I’ve been working hard for the past two weeks at my home church, Cavanaugh Church. I’ve been doing all kinds of stuff from helping plan the mission trip to buying games supplies for the youth group to helping feed the homeless. I love my job, and I love how much energy I get to put into it. It’s going to be a great summer.
That’s pretty much all I’ve been up to this month. Yesterday, I celebrated baby Wyatt’s first birthday with his parents/my friends Zach and Jessica and many others. Today I’m working with kids at my church’s Celebrate Recovery lunch and heading to Camp Beaverfork to be a counselor and work technology for teen camp. I’ll be traveling most of June, so I’ll have lots of fun stuff to share with you when I get back. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!
The X-Men film franchise started strong back in 2000. They had a bit of a slump with The Last Stand, and Origins was just bad. But the series received a much-needed shot in the arm with the success of First Class, and now the X-Men are back in business. Not just the new, young, prequel X-Men, mind you. The original X-Men are still in action, too, thanks to a genius idea that led to Days of Future Past.
Days of Future Past, the seventh and newest installment in the X-Men film series, takes place both in a dystopian future and in a could-have-been past that the X-Men desperately need to make a reality. In the future, the X-Men (played by the original cast) are being hunted down by mutant-seeking robots called Sentinels that exist partially due to decisions each of them made in the past. In a desperate attempt to create a better future, they send Wolverine into the past to interact with their younger selves (played by the new cast) and hopefully avoid the horrible future they caused.
When I first heard about Days of Future Past, I thought it was too ambitious. I thought they had gotten cocky after the success of First Class and bitten off more than they could chew. But then I saw the first trailer and got really excited. From the first time I saw footage from the film, I knew it was going to be amazing. I realized Days of Future Past could be done and done right. And that it was.
A big part of the movie’s appeal is that it can draw in the original crowd of X-Men fans from the early 2000’s while also getting the attention of newcomers who have only seen First Class. Days of Future Past serves as a sequel to both The Last Stand and First Class. The combination of casts is brilliant. While the majority of the movie takes place in the past, there is a good deal of time spent with the original cast in the future, and what takes place there does have implications for the film’s overall plot. To me, the film felt pretty well balanced, and that’s something I found very reassuring.
Days of Future Past was also just a pleasure to watch. It had great action, some funny joke, and even a couple of touching moments. The plot never seemed to drag. The acting was spot-on. And the movie always kept you just confused enough to stay interested. I have no complaints about any of those aspects of the film. I do have a couple of worries, though.
I was really hoping that the filmmakers were introducing the time travel element to fix some of the inconsistencies between The Last Stand and Days of Future Past. In The Last Stand, we see Professor X and Magneto walking together and starting the school in the 80’s. In First Class, we learn that Professor X lost the ability to walk and also had his falling out with Magneto in the 60’s. I haven’t found any good explanation to correct these discrepancies. I was hoping Days of Future Past would offer that. It didn’t, which leads me to believe that no future X-Men film will. But maybe that’s OK. The new films are much better than The Last Stand, so maybe I should just choose that version of the story over the old one.
But that one complaint aside, I have nothing but good things to say about this movie. It’s accessible to long-time X-Men fans and to people who have only seen First Class. It has fanboy appeal and serious mainstream possibilities. Days of Future Past is just another reminder of how great X-Men films can be when they’re done right, and it makes me excited for the future of the franchise.
Days of Future Past does leave the future of the X-Men films a mystery, though. It definitely sets us up for a sequel with the new cast, but it also seems to be continuing the story of the old cast in the new timeline. Are they planning on splitting the casts back up and making separate films? Will every subsequent X-Men film include members of both casts? Does Days of Future Past completely undo the plots of all the movies before it (excluding First Class), or are at least some aspects of them (for example, Wolverine’s adventures in Japan) kept? These are questions the X-Men film creators will have to answer now that the film is out. And they’ll have to do it fast if they want to have Apocalypse ready for 2016.
In the age of superhero film universes, X-Men has proven that they’re still very much in the game. They’ve put out seven movies in 14 years with two different casts and created a rich, fun universe for moviegoers to experience. And this is only the beginning. There are at least three more X-Men movies in the works, and the X-Men will soon be crossing paths with another superhero team, The Fantastic Four, after Fox reboots that series. The future of X-Men is bright, and I can’t wait to see what’s to come. Thank you guys for reading. Go see Days of Future Past, and let me know what you think of it!
We’ve all heard it before. We learned it in Sunday School. We’ve heard it preached from the pulpit. You’ve probably read it in your personal Bible study time. It’s something we always hear but rarely give much thought to. It’s the classic commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”
Like I said, we’ve all heard this a lot. Maybe we’ve heard it so many times that we don’t really take it seriously anymore. But isn’t that a problem? The Sabbath is something that’s mentioned throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New. It’s mentioned over and over again, and yet for some reason, the fact that it comes up so often makes us take it less seriously. I’ve been guilty of this, too. For my blog post this week, I want to take a serious look at the Sabbath and what I think it means in the Christian life.
The Sabbath, or day of rest, has its roots all the way back in Genesis 2. After spending six days creating the earth, God rested on the seventh, creating the seven-day week cycle and setting the seventh day apart as holy. One might wonder why God rested on the seventh day. Was God tired after six days of creation? Does God have a limited amount of energy that has to be replenished? Of course not. God did not rest for His own sake. He rested in order to set a precedent for us. Six days of work followed by one day of rest. That was how God structured the first week, and that’s how He meant for us to structure our weeks, too.
The Sabbath became an official rule after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to Mount Sinai. There Moses received the Ten Commandments (among many other laws). One of the “big ten” concerns the treatment of the Sabbath day. You can read the full commandment in Exodus 20:8–11. These verses present a pretty clear image of what the Sabbath was supposed to be for the Israelites and why. God commanded them (through Moses) to avoid working on the seventh day of each week. Why? Because that is what God did when He created the earth. It seems simple enough. But the Israelites immediately struggled with it.
Exodus 16 tells us that while the children of Israel were wondering in the wilderness, God provided bread for them from heaven. Every morning when they walked out of their tents, they would see an abundance of bread on the ground for them to gather and eat. They were supposed to gather each morning only what they needed for that day, and on the sixth day of the week, they were supposed to gather double so they wouldn’t have to gather on the Sabbath. They weren’t even supposed to cook on the Sabbath. But many people disobeyed and tried to gather food on the Sabbath day only to find that there wasn’t any. God became angry with the Israelites because they didn’t respect the commandment He had given them.
The Sabbath is obviously something that God takes very seriously. He wants us to take a day of rest each week not only because He told us to but because He knows that it is what’s best for us. Our bodies and minds need some time off, especially in our day and age where we are bombarded with information and stressors left and right. We need a Sabbath in order to stay optimally healthy and energized so that we can continue living the lives that God has for us. But practicing the Sabbath has been tricky from the very first time God commanded it, and it hasn’t gotten much easier since then.
Jesus dealt with all the messiness associated with the Sabbath day on several occasions. By Jesus’ time, the religious leaders had come up with a long list of rules for the Sabbath in an attempt to make it easier observe. But instead of helping people obey God’s commandments, these rules actually just privileged man’s ideas over God’s. There were rules like how many steps one was allowed to take on the Sabbath day, and people were ridiculed if they broke these rules. That’s not observing the Sabbath. The rule may have originally been well-intended, but the Sabbath isn’t about making sure you follow a list of rules. It’s about putting all the lists away and allowing yourself to find rest in the God who created Sabbath in the first place.
Jesus made this clear in Matthew 12. His disciples were being ridiculed by the Pharisees (Jewish leaders) for plucking grain on the Sabbath, but Jesus didn’t rebuke them. He stood up for them. He said, “And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:7–8). Jesus told the Pharisees that the Sabbath isn’t about following man-made rules. God made the Sabbath, and He decides what is appropriate to do on the Sabbath and what isn’t. Jesus drove the point home by going to the synagogue and healing a man’s withered hand, another activity prohibited on the Sabbath.
It’s not that Jesus didn’t respect the Sabbath. He was a Jew, after all. He just didn’t feel the need to follow man-made rules (sometimes referred to as “tradition”) that tried to set themselves equal with God’s commandments. Jesus understood the meaning being the Sabbath, and He lived it out. We know that Jesus regularly took time for rest and prayer. Just like in everything else, He is our ultimate example of how we should treat the Sabbath.
We seem to live in a society that is completely incompatible with the idea of the Sabbath day. We generally work five days a week and spend the other two days trying to accomplish all the stuff we put off during the week and maybe squeezing in a little bit of recreation. We have regular worship, but it’s not even on the seventh day of the week. And a lot of people don’t have control over their work schedules, which often require them to work on Sunday, the day that in our society sort of resembles a Sabbath. So what are we to do? Should we just give up on the Sabbath completely?
The answer to that question is no. Of course not. Scripture makes it very clear that the Sabbath is important to God, and it should be important to us, too. So then the question becomes, “How does one observe the Sabbath in this crazy, hectic, non-Sabbath-friendly world?”
I think the answer is simple. We have to make time for rest. To put away all the tasks and stressors and everything else and just spend time giving ourselves a break. To spend time with God and find rest in who He is. That’s Sabbath, and that’s something we all need on a regular basis.
Originally, the Sabbath was on Saturday, but Christians moved it to Sunday to be in line with the day of Jesus’ resurrection. That’s fine. I don’t think the day matters so much as the act of doing it. If you have to work on Sunday, don’t feel bad. Do what you can with the situation that you’re in, but make sure that you’re consistently taking time to rest like God commanded us to.
The Sabbath is also a day for worshipping God. I think this is combined with rest for a reason. Worshipping God is a great way to connect deeply with Him, realign our minds with His purposes, and feel that energy that you can only feel when you’re worshipping God. Worship combined with rest gets us ready for upcoming week so that be at our peak mentally, physically, and spiritualy as we go out and live for Him.
There’s one more thing I want to say about the Sabbath, and then I’ll be done. Right before He healed the man with the withered hand in Matthew 12, Jesus said, “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:12). I think what he meant there is that it’s OK to do work on the Sabbath as long as it’s something God has called you to do. Pastors, for example, work very hard on the Sabbath. Putting on a church service takes work from countless volunteers. There’s nothing wrong with doing the Lord’s work on the Sabbath. Just like any other day, if God is calling you to do something on the Sabbath, do it. Don’t let someone else’s “traditional” (i.e., man-made) beliefs about the Sabbath keep you from doing the Lord’s work.
My curiosity about the Sabbath came from a personal struggle I had, and I think this struggles pretty well sums up my thoughts on the Sabbath. It all started last week when I decided to start running on a regular basis. I told myself I would do it seven days a week just to keep the routine going. But then I got to thinking about the Sabbath. Should I exercise on Sundays? I mean, I’m trying to take care of my body, which is something I feel like God has been calling me to do. But then again, my body could probably use a break after six days of running. I decided to skip running on Sundays and instead use that time for Bible study, meditation, and simply resting in the Lord. But that’s not to say I would ever judge anyone for exercising on the Sabbath if that’s they feel like God is calling them to do. The Sabbath is going to look a little bit different for each of us, but as long as we’re all taking time to rest and spend some quality time with God, I think we’re living up to what He has called us to do on the Sabbath.
