Favorite Christmas Movie

Looking for that perfect Christmas gift for the family? Why not a chicken? Stick a bow on top, put the chicken under the tree, and who knows, you may even have a couple eggs to fry up for breakfast Christmas morning.

Give the gift that keeps on clucking. A chicken. Okay, maybe it's not the perfect gift for your family, but it is the perfect gift for a poor family in Asia. A chicken can break the cycle of poverty for a poor family. Yes, a chicken.

A chicken's eggs provide food and nourishment for a family, and they can sell those eggs at the market for income. When you donate a chicken or any other animal through Gospel for Asia, 100% of what you give goes to the field. And the best gift of all, when Gospel for Asia gives a poor family an animal, it opens the door to the love of Jesus. So give the perfect gift for a family in Asia this Christmas. Give them a chicken.

Call 866-WINASIA or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to CritterCampaign.org. Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God podcast. Our show, Stories of Hopelessness, Turned into Hope. Your chosen Truth Network podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call The Masculine Journey. The Masculine Journey starts here now.

Welcome to Masculine Journey. We are very excited to have you with us this week, and this is one of our favorite weeks of the year. You know, Robby, I know you're not expecting me to ask you a question like I do every week, but this is one of the more exciting shows, at least for me, is it not for you? It's 13 on Christmas Eve, so I could say E-V-V-V-V. Yeah, I was hoping you would. I was trying to do the math in my head, and I couldn't quite do it. It's the 12th. And so, yeah, if you can say E-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V 13 times, you got it. That's what it is.

So that's the show. And it's very exciting. I was crushed last week that you guys didn't give me five Eves for my birthday, which was the 10th.

That's really sad. You can see that, yes. Yeah, so I was listening to the last year's show, so the whole Eves E-V-V-V thing was kind of nice. I remember your joke from last year about too many Eves, and you said, oh, that would be eavesdropping. And I was like, that is a pun from Robby. Yeah, that's a Robby one. We got a second play.

We're off by one or two. It's eavesdropping. You can't do that. Yeah. That's good.

I like that, Andy. So this particular show topic is kind of free-flowing. It's actually, we threw it out last week, and it's a Christmas clip from your favorite Christmas show or a show that really spoke to you or no real rules to it. Just what Christmas clip do you feel like using this year and why? So there you go.

Yeah, so we have you up first, Robby. You want to tell us a little bit about your clip? Yeah, that's really, really fun. You know, God gives us the lights of our heart at times. And I had a dream for many years to write a screenplay, and so as it was, God provided a way for me to create Christian Car Guy Theater, which God then provided all these amazing actors. And so a number of years ago, I just loved the book A Christmas Carol, and certainly I love all the renditions of the movie. And so I decided to do a Christian Car Guy Theater episode the whole hour Christmas special called A Christmas Corolla, which, you know, two different scrooges, one inside the car, the crankshaft, and the other one, you know, being another character. But I cast my dear friend, Vinnie Menino, who is in this clip as Guido Gasket, and he was playing the ghost of Christmas future, only he was driving, what was the car from back, the DeLorean, right? So what you're going to hear is Guido Gasket, and what was really neat is I was kind of just totally finally trying to walk in this message of the masculine journey, and I understood the new name and how that is your identity. And I understood some things about your identity that really is a present, as well as actually the salvation that comes with Jesus.

So when you listen to this clip, when you hear the guys start talking about, oh, I'm protectorate, what they've done is they've heard their name, and they're deciding to open up the present of their identity. But before they do that, they get a little shock from our old friend Vinnie the Bat, which, you know, he was completely typecast, but I should set this up even better because he was blind. And so I couldn't give him a script to read, so I actually sat with him, and we would say one or two words, three words, but you can hear this from his heart, you would think he said all this stuff because he was such a great actor. He really was. And that he laid this stuff out like he was still Vinnie the Bat.

So here you go, Guido Gasket in a Christmas Corolla. Come on, we're leaving. Hang on one minute.

I want to hear what happened to Minnie Matt. Do I have to get my bat? I said we're leaving. That's it. One more stop for you two.

And I'm sure you guessed it, the boneyard. If I'm in, the time is almost up. Spirit, before you show us that, just answer this one question. Are these the things that will be, or the things that might be if we don't open our present? All right, you asked, so I'm going to give it to you straight.

God knows, and only God knows. And here is our only hope. Good fruit comes from good branches that are connected to a good root that's in good soil. That root is Jesus, God's son. So you better open up that present Jesus sacrificed on the cross for your failures. For your sins, for you, will be planted. It's your choice. It can either be fruit or fertilizer. Got it?

Fruit or fertilizer. Your choice. Here we are at the boneyard. Get a good look at your headstone. The first one reads, deputy useless is now in his casket.

He failed to pay attention to Guido Gask. The next one says, here lies Crankshaft Kramer. His attraction to worms could not be plainer. Your choice. Oh, oh, oh, God. Oh, father. Yes.

Yes. You've made enough. I want the protector that you've made me to be. I want to be the driver you made me to be. I'm not the man I was. I'm different now. I'm not the Crankshaft I was. You're the new man. I'm not the man I was. It's hard to listen to, you know, just missing Vinnie so much.

It's such a great thing. But, you know, only Vinnie could pull a car off and make it still scary. I mean, I was listening to him, but it made me scared, you know, just because Vinnie had that authority to his voice. And the beauty of that clip is he was still pretty much had his complete voice. It wasn't like he was the last couple years of his life. And so, you know, it's a delightful thing for me to be able to share life with some really, really amazing people.

And, you know, I couldn't – it's going to sound a little bit creepy, Sam, actually, but I was thinking about it. Like Vinnie now – because if you didn't know, Vinnie went to be the Lord, I guess, around March. But he now knows, you know, he knows all that stuff, like that he was predicting in this particular clip in a way that, you know, I'd love to have seen that reunion. Maybe we'll get to see the instant replay of Jesus and Vinnie. He spent so much time with him.

Yeah, he did spend a lot of time in prayer with him. I want to go a totally different angle on a clip. And I want to go to Harold and get Harold's clip in. And so, Harold, tell us a little bit about your clip, and then we'll play it.

Then you can come back and tell us why you chose that. Well, the clip is from Christmas Vacation. And Clark Griswold has spent quite a bit of time hooking up 25,000 little tiny twinkling Italian lights over the house. And he's so excited to show it to the family. And the scene that you're playing is where he has them all come out, and they do the drum roll, and he turns the switch, and nothing happens.

And he has what some people used to refer to as a herald. And what you'll hear is him tearing up the lawn ornaments in his anger over the lights not working. Everybody come out quick! Look at the lights! Wait a minute!

I don't believe it! What's all the yelling about? What's going on here?

25,000 twinkling. What's he doing, Clark? I haven't the foggiest. What is wrong with that?

Wait a minute! Yeah, the sounds you hear. Just kicking the reindeer and the little sled and the snowman. Just totally destroying it. And the reason that I like it so much is because it's so much the way I used to be. When things would frustrate me, I wanted to break stuff.

And so that's why it appeals to me so much is because I can look at it and see how people used to see me. Yeah, I would call that just about every project I tried to do for a period of time. Unfortunately, I've kind of grown in that area. It's not quite as bad. But it almost gets to the point where I would break more than I would put together, which made it kind of sad.

The one out there seemed like I was kicking the Santa Claus ornament and stuff around the house. But those are those things that you look back and you just thank God for all the work that he's done. I don't know why I thought kicking the lawnmower would make it crank.

Yeah, or hitting a wall or other things that you think is going to make something do it. I hate to admit, I think I shared it on the air before, but I learned how to do drywall repair because of my temper. It probably led me to a career at some point.

But yeah, not the way to really get into the career and doing it that way. Now, we don't have time for another clip, so let's talk a little bit about the, yeah, Harold's clip or Robby's clip. So Rodney, I want you to speak a little bit about those two clips. What from those really kind of spoke to you? Well, the anger thing, I think, hits us all.

So yeah, I had holes, like we'd mentioned not too long ago, holes in the walls and stuff like that, a bunch of those. But for me, I didn't really get to know Vinny deeply, but I did get to meet him a couple times. And I lived through those stories of you guys with Vinny. And I had heard Christmas Corolla and just loved it. And I was like, to get to meet, because I heard Christmas Corolla and I didn't know Vinny. And then I get to meet Vinny, the real live Vinny, after you guys was all talked about who Vinny is. And it's like, he's exactly as he sounds on the Christmas Corolla.

He's exactly as you guys described him. And it's like, there's really this Vinny guy, he's really this ex-mom guy at the bat and all this stuff. And he's just an awesome dude. And he's just fun to be around.

So having that, I'm with Robby, I was so glad when I saw that clip come up that Robby's going to play that one. Because I know I think you've done some other stuff with Vinny and at different times like that, Christmas and other things. I just think that nostalgia of one of the brothers in the band is awesome.

And even a guy like me who doesn't know him very well just misses him so much. Yeah, Vinny was one of the few guys that you could say probably looked exactly like he sounded. You know, it's not like you'd meet him and go, oh, you look like that. No, he kind of looked like the way he sounded.

Yep, that's what I expect. Yeah, yeah, and he was kind of scary. If he didn't know anything, yeah, he did. He could really whip it on you if he needed to. But he had a heart of gold and would do lots of things for you. And definitely we saw God change his heart. Real quick, I learned one time hitting a wall, missing a stud by two inches, that that's a bad thing to do.

So I didn't have to learn how to fix it. That's right. In the meantime, go to masculinejourney.org to look up upcoming events. Now watch the video. Just be yourselves. Where are you going? I'm going to pick a fight. If it feels like every day is picking a fight, then you might want to come listen to The Masculine Journey and find out why we use clips like these to illustrate the story God is telling in the lives of men today. The truth is God designed you to pick a fight.

But which fights do we pick? Well, grab your gear and come on a quest every Saturday at noon. And now The Masculine Journey After Hours Podcast. Masculine Journey Radio. Hi, this is Sam with Masculine Journey.

I'm here with my son Eli. We're going to talk about ways that you can help support the ministry. One way, you can go to smile.amazon.com.

Go to smile.amazon.com. There's information on our website there on how to do that. You can go to facebook.com and click the donate button. Or you can go to masculinejourney.org and find the donate button.

Masculinejourney.org. Or if you want to mail something in, mail it to P.O. Box 550, Kernersville, North Carolina, 27285. It is Santa Claus. It is Santa Claus. It is Santa Claus.

Welcome back to The Masculine Journey. It's got to put you in a Christmas spirit. I mean, obviously, we're not celebrating Santa Claus. But it's just one of those you just listen to that. And that's a tribute to yours, Harold. That's from Christmas Vacation. That's one of the songs that comes from it. we want to use something for Memphis for the bump in another really funny part of that is when he tries to turn on the lights and his father-in-law is standing there and he says the little lights aren't twinkling Clark you know it's just very sarcastic like okay I didn't realize that until you told me but thank you yeah something like thanks for noticing ed yeah yeah you noticing that yeah there's so many funny things in that movie it's just it's just great yeah there's just so many scenes you know he's talking to cousin Eddie's like take you out in the woods would leave you for dead or something like that you know there's just all these little white lighters that make me laugh throughout the movie and I haven't watched it yet this Christmas season it's one of the ones that I tend to like to watch with my sons right so we will watch that at some point I'm sure maybe when we get a chance to see my daughter we'll watch it with her is what we talked about last time but moving on to Jim you have a clip from a classic movie it is the Christmas story and I had to pick it as my favorite because it's probably the only one we make sure we see every year and it really I'm a little bit younger than that crowd but there's so much that I remember from my childhood that's in this one I never actually tried the one I got the clip for but this is a funny scene and a lot of the language is similar to what I experienced as a kid hey do you want to set it up more than that no no idea what's going on well they'll know that if you haven't seen the movie then you don't deserve to know what's going on it is kids during recess at the flagpole and they've heard the rumor that if you lick a cold flagpole your tongue will stick to it and the challenge is down and it's sort of a guy thing that we have to put up with and I think most of the rest of it's pretty obvious the exact exchange and nuance of phrase in this ritual is very important now it was serious a double dog dare what else was left but a triple dare you and finally the coup de gras of all dares the sinister triple dog dare shorts created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple dare and going right for the throat flick spine stiffened his lips curled in a defiant sneer there was no going back now that would have stopped yeah right cuz anyone seen flick flick flick who he was at recess wasn't he I said has anyone seen flick yes yesterday holy cow it's a fire department so Jim what was it about that clip well I actually got to quadruple dare once and nobody knew what that meant so that that brought back a powerful memory of but it was pretty much standard playing with the kids in the neighborhood you know dare each other to do stupid so what was the again just leave it there what was the quadruple dare yeah I don't actually remember I'm pretty sure it had to do some had something to do with a tree and I didn't want to bring up that because I know that's a painful subject for you Robby that clip I never found funny honestly because I was the youngest brother of two older brothers nine and ten years older in back at the time I was growing up there were no ice makers you know in refrigerators there were the little ice cube trays and they weren't made of plastic they were made of metal yeah right and my brother mark you know being who he is he's always an instigator go figure more than me and he's like hey it's a really cool thing if you stick your tongue on this you know and me being at the time I was probably about seven eight you know like really yeah that I stuck my tongue on it and you know I'm like in order to help what's he do he grabs it he rips it off of my tongue oh my gosh you think it hurts would you burn your tongue try taking a layer or two off of it with an ice cube thing I mean you could literally see it on the side of the ice cube tray and so I would watch that movie and I'm like that's not that funny it's really kind of painful well thank you for making it even more fun I lived it yes hot water does the trick yeah that would have been if I was about seven probably 1970 or so about that time and so yeah it was wow yeah they didn't give me a chance to put warm water on it it was don't we love big brothers oh yeah and then it was you tell mom I'm gonna thump you you know I was the big brother and my little brother and I got into a fight I threw him through a wall again breaking through dr. actually this was through plaster they didn't have dry wall back no it's laughing and we moved a dresser over in front of it it stayed there and we got away with it for about 12 years so they went to sell the house they're like oh yeah there's a big hole here yeah Rodney won't we go ahead and play your clip so why don't you talk a little bit about it and set it up okay it's home alone and I didn't end up going with my favorite clip from Christmas Andy had thrown out last week about this topic and being kind of how how a Christmas clip relates to the masculine journey and then Sam threw up well how could home alone relate to masculine journey and I just thought it's kind of funny in us next day I'm sitting there thinking through equipment well when Kevin is at home and he realizes that he has to defend his turf he sets up you know the whole house with all the gadgets and everything to go you know put the hair on fire and put the ice on the steps and all those kinds of things and the nails on the stairs and he sets up his house he's just having a casual dinner of macaroni and cheese sitting there and then it's like oh it's time for the robbers to show up he knew what time they were show up and he runs that back door and he just kind of gets there with his BB gun he's like don't be scared now and I'm thinking of all the things that we've had going on this year to be scared of because everybody's scared of every freaking thing that's going on and there's even more coming out you know these days that you know somebody's gonna be scared of and we just had chaos can't with an Arnold and I'm like all this stuff just kind of went to gamik well this clip is just kind of perfect for chaos and then of course then you have my word of the year his father and you have at the end of this whole thing he's got his neighbor who he's completely scared of comes to his rescue and saves him when he finally he's like done everything he can to fight these two bandits and it's like oh gosh he's about to be had and the God figure kind of comes in and saves him at the end so and we find out he has what it takes yes this is it don't get scared now Merry Christmas little fella we know that you're in there and that you're all alone yeah come on kid open up it's Santa Claus and his elf we're not gonna hurt you no no that's nice presents for you be a good little fella now and open the door hello I tell you that movie that you know I mean it was so good they had to try to keep repeating it over and over and over to try to get that same magic they did the first one it is never quite could do it but it is brings out such great memories I mean when you have movies from your childhood that you can just sit there and quote and then just keep talking about and everybody around you can quote it isn't that just fun you know the thing on that movie it's sad but it's also kind of funny the original when they originally did part of it Joe Pesci's character was not supposed to really go into those tirades but he'd done so many of the gangster movies and things in the past he didn't really know how to act without cussing a whole bunch and so they included that part it is because it gave relief on how he could you know express himself and it do it in a PG manner you know Joe was never really your it's not the guy you'd pick for a kid's movie really but you know that that is a great movie of you know just the whole neighbor coming to the rescue and one of the cool scenes in that is you know he meets a neighbor and becomes friends with him in the church right yeah oh that's that is one of the favorite scenes and that's where when you start thinking about this move and you want to play something Christmas time that's kind of where you kind of go but it was just the whole chaos can't the week before and we were talking about all the things on that show that you know trying to let chaos take control your life and Kevin was not gonna have chaos in his life he had complete control he's going to the store he was buying food he was doing whatever he's doing he was acting very adultish you know when he was alone and he just kind of took control and I just love the way that in that movie he just he just turns everything upside down and it's believable that he could actually pull all this off as a child and it was just it's just such a fun movie to sit there and dream about boy wouldn't you love to have done that yourself yeah I actually watched this movie about a week ago and I watched it I can't watch it without watching all those things you know oh my gosh that would hurt so bad Joe Pesci gets the top of his head bird you know and then his Marv steps in on the broken Christmas ornaments I'm like oh my gosh there's no way I've never stepped on the nail after he stepped on the nail in the tar and all those things exactly and so we have so much more to talk about coming up in the after hours if if you listen to us on the regular broadcast you can go to masculine journey dot org and download the after hours podcast that goes along with us you can go to Spotify Pandora any of the places that you can get a podcast we're there please go to masculine journey dot org send us an email let us know how you're doing ask us any question you may have this is the truth Network