gomertopia

Mark Lee’s Fav Third Day Shows

In this post on the Third Day blog, Mark talks about his top ten Third Day shows. He lists the 2004 Great Gomer Gathering in Houston, Texas, as his third favorite show. I started to put my comment there, but it started to get a little lengthy, so I decided this would be a better place.

That "sea of orange" in the audience was quite a sight! I'll never, ever forget it. I sent KSBJ email after email telling them that this was going to be the first Great Gomer Gathering, and could they help us surprise Third Day with a "sea of orange" by having everyone, all 14,000+ audience members, wear orange. How awesome that would be!!! Third Day would take the stage and be totally amazed at the love and support from the audience. It had been my fantasy for years (still is) that there would be tons of people at every show wearing Gomer shirts. This idea was just an exaggeration of that fantasy. I had no idea it could be as awesome as it was! At the concert, Dan and I walked all around the Pavilion, up on the grass hill, just looking at 12,000 or so people dressed in orange (there were about 2,000 hold outs). This may sound silly, but I cried. It was so beautiful! There was so much love poured out to this band I loved, our chance to give back a little of the love Third Day had given to us for so many years. Later, Third Day's manager told me that when Tai exited the stage he told her, "It don't get no better than this." Mission accomplished!

Of course, now I have the problem of trying to figure out what the Gomers can do to top that! Any ideas?

Random Thoughts on a Monday

I went to Costa Rica on vacation with my husband last week. He had won the trip by being one of the four best salesmen in his company, (and there are hundreds of salesmen in his company!) It was wonderful! I am so proud of him! And it was so nice to get away from it all for a week. Although I must admit, it took me two days to get over the electronic withdrawal I was experiencing. (No cell phone and no computer = no Gomertopia, no Twitter, no blog, no message boards, no Facebook, no MySpace = no friends!) But once I did unplug . . . ahhhhh! So here I am getting back into the swing of things, and I thought I'd post a blog or two.

I just found out that I can open a Word document . . . it feels weird to capitalize the word "Word" when I'm not talking about Scripture – and that's another random thought . . . anyway, I can open a Word document and type out a blog post and it will post it directly to my blog. How cool is that? No more worrying about losing the post if the internet goes out (as has happened to Mark Lee numerous times), and I don't have to remember to copy and paste the post into a Word doc. to save a copy. This is the first post I've done like this, so I don't know the down sides yet. So far I see that I can pick a category, but not multiple categories. –YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS! As I was typing this telling you how wonderful this is, my Word program crashed! Thankfully, it saved my work, but yeah. It's Monday. Ha ha! Okay, enough about how wonderful posting a blog from Word is.

I think I'll save you having to read a long blog post and break my random thoughts up into several relevant posts, so stay tuned!

Come On Home, Gomers!

I told you all about the new Gomertopia before it was opened. The time is here to come join! We have a lot of your friends and fellow Gomers on there already! So come join at www.ThirdDay.com/Gomer ! We're waiting for you! (Even if you don't consider yourself a "Gomer", come join us anyway! We'd love to have you!)

The Columbus Photo Album is Fixed!

Good ol' Typepad techs! They fixed the Columbus photo album so that all the photos are now in order. So if you want to go look at it in the way it was supposed to be viewed, it's right over there to the left. (Right to the left?)

Your Art, Your Revelation, on the new ThirdDay.com

Salvation Mountain is a real place. Located north of Calipatria, California, it has been entered to the congressional record as a national treasure. Leonard Knight created Salvation Mountain as a large public art project designed to send the message that "God Loves Everyone."

Third Day drew inspiration from Salvation Mountain to create the album cover for their new album, Revelation. The cover is an artistic interpretation of Knight's creation composed of the song titles of  the album to send our own message of God's love to the world.

Now here's where you come in.

Using Third Day's music as your inspiration, create your own piece of art, your own revelation. It can be anything from a short story inspired by a song, a music video, a short film, a painting, or a cartoon. Anything! We'll post your art on the Revelation page of the new Third Day website to share with the larger Third Day community.

Send your submissions to tdrevelations@gmail.com to be considered for placement on the website.

All video or audio samples must be uploaded to YouTube and link sent. Please: Do not send raw audio or video content.

We'd like to have some entries before the website goes up on April 23, which means we need them soon! Be the first to get your work displayed on the website!

Backstage

Ever wonder what it looks like backstage at a Third Day show? Well, Revive thought you might, so they've brought you this little tour.

Missing pages fixed

If you've been trying to access the pages to the left, clicked on them only to find a page asking for comments with no content, I apologize. I didn't know there was a problem with them until I checked them today. But they are fixed now. So if you've always wondered what exactly a Gomer was, where the name came from, what it means, or just wanted to see Tai, David, Mark, or Mac's response to the scrapbooks we gave them a couple of years ago, now you can just click and see in the pages to the left under Learn more about Gomers on these pages.

When Mama's Put Their Heads Together

I found that I belong to a sisterhood. Seems I'm not the only "Mama" with a blog. There are a few others, including BooMama. The banner on her site claims that she is "read by tens of people every single day", but I think that is a vast understatement. She actually has thousands of loyal readers. I can understand why! She has such a fun way of writing. Read a page or two of her blog, and you will fall in love with her.

Recently, I had the honor to be interviewed by BooMama, who, as it turns out, is fascinated by our Gomer family. It was a very interesting interview. She asked me things no one has ever asked before! You can read it on her blog. Leave her a comment, and you might just win a copy of Christmas Offerings! Check it out here: www.BooMama.net Don't forget to bookmark the site. I know you are going to want to return!

When you leave BooMama's site, click on over to Big Mama's site. BooMama and Big Mama, well, just from what I've read on their respective blogs and heard on the Big Boo Cast, I'd swear they were twins seperated at birth! If you enjoy reading their individual blogs, you will love hearing them together! I laughed 'til I cried! Makes me think I ought to get Debbie aka Aunt Gomer, to do some blog casts with me. She's coming to Texas this week (tomorrow night, actually!!!) and besides hitting two Third Day Christmas shows, we'll be making a little suishi video for our Mac Powell Fear Factor. (Not for the squeamish!)

Okay, stop reading this and go read my interview on BooMama's blog. (You just might learn something you didn't know about the Gomers.)

Gomer Weight Loss Challenge

So have you ever wondered how much exercise you can get dancing at a concert? Well, I have, and I found out. But first a little back story. Three months ago, I decided to get serious and lose some weight and get into shape. Towards that end, I started wearing a pedometer everyday. The idea is to walk about 10,000 steps per day. The average person walks this much, and it's equal to about five miles, depending on your stride. So I wore it to a couple of concerts. I went to see Family Force 5 one night and TobyMac another night. At the TobyMac show, I danced 6,000 steps!!! Now that was a rockin' show! At the FF5 show, I danced 4,000 steps. That show super rocked, but I think my pedometer was hampered by the fact that I was standing on a couch the whole time. Much easier way to see, but not as easy to move. Now you may think that that wasn't really walking steps so it doesn't count, but movement is the goal, and I can tell you I was moving! Anyway, all this to tell you that if you are interested in losing weight, there are a group of Gomers that are encouraging each other in that goal. If you are moving toward that same goal, please come join us. I've lost 18 pounds so far, and it's kinda fun! Come read my weight loss blog to see how I'm doing it! You can also see what five pounds of fat looks like there. Yuck!

Brad and Mindi Bring Home New Daughter from China

Brad Avery, Third Day guitarist, has been in China to adopt the newest member of his family, daughter Canaan. The event marks the end of a long process for the Avery family, who have been preparing for this adoption for the past two years. After spending countless hours traveling the distance between the United States and Nanchang, China, Brad Avery, along with his wife, Mindi, and three daughters, Chloe, Charis, and Chai, officially welcomed Canaan Avery into their family on July 9. "The first 24 hours we had her were quite emotional in many different ways. However, it has been nothing short of a miracle to see her thrive and literally come to life these last 4 days," Mindi Avery marvels. "She was handed to us with a blank look on her face, bruises on her body, a runny nose and rattling cough.... but who knew what a bunch of kisses, lots of hugs, a few toys, three hyper sisters running around and a trip to the Super Wal-Mart would do? "I know that each day in our loving arms will be a day that God uses to heal her and let her know that she is adored and cherished by her Creator," You can read all about Brad's family's adventures as they welcome this precious new member in his blog on ThirdDay.com!

There's a New Kid in Town

Third Day has added another feature to the website. This is the blog of their tour pastor, Sir Nigel James! As Nigel explains in his first post, "A knight of the realm I am not. A reverend, yes. Yet 'Sir Nigel James' does have a certain dignity to it." Nigel will be giving us the inside view of life on the road with Third Day as they travel around the world on tour. Sounds like something every Third Day fan will want to read! Welcome aboard, Nigel!

Welcome to the New Gomers.net!

If you've been to Gomers.net in the past months, you probably have been wondering why the home page still advertises tickets for the fall tour from last year. I have just not been able to update the site. Well, technically I could have, but there were things in the way. This is what happened. Last fall, I got a new laptop. Problem was that I never found the disk on which I burned my downloaded copy of my website building software, and I wasn't too keen on buying the new version. So today, I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy the new version and finally get the site updated. (It was getting really embarrassing being so far behind the times!)

As I was looking at the software, and finding out that the version I had been using was so antiquated that my site would not have translated into it, but that it was okay, because I could buy the version before that for a hundred dollars less, and my site could be opened in that version (take a breath, it's a long sentence), I had a flash of brilliance! Or at least a better, much easier idea dawned on me. (Thank You, Lord.)

MySpace

I've recently come to appreciate how wonderful and powerful MySpace can be. I've learned that it's not the sleezy place I once thought it was. I mean, sure, there is that element. But there are tens of thousands of nice, normal, sweet, loving people out there. There are families and people of all ages, and from every walk of life. Everyone has a MySpace. I decided it was time the Gomers had a MySpace, too. So in addition to the Third Day website and message boards, Gomertopia and it's blog, and the Gomers.net site, we have one more presence on the internet. Come be our friend! It's www.MySpace.com/ThirdDayGomers

Exciting week!

Sorry for not writing much lately, but I've been getting ready for the Texas Third Day shows! My husband Dan, Debbie, Lori and I are all hightailing it to San Antonio on Thursday to see the show. Then we will have the Houston Gomer Gathering on Saturday! It's going to be a great week! I'll be posting pictures next week, so you can almost feel like you were there. If you are a Gomer in the Houston area, sign up to come to the Gathering. If you are going to the San Antonio show, find me and say hello! I'll be the one in the orange shirt that says, "Mama".

Join the Blogroll. Be one of the cool kids!

You may have noticed that incredibly long and always growing list on the left side of this blog. It's the Third Day Blogroll. If you have a weblog, you can join. Just click "Add Yourself" at the very bottom of the blogroll.

Fanatics Unite!

I was just checking out Shari Caudron's blog. She's the author of a book called, Who Are You People? She went cross country to find out what makes groups like the Gomers tick, people who gather because they have a common passion for something. I was surprised to find there were other groups like us, really. I mean, I knew there were Barbie collectors and Trekkers and other types of fanatics that got together, but I didn't know they were a community like we are. In the post entitled Let's Build a Fanatical Empire she says, "Every subculture I studied exhibited the same zany, who-gives-a-rip passion, and the same vibrant sense of community." Yep, sounds like us.

Band Sightings!

I've decided to start letting you know everytime a member of Third Day, or any other band that you may like, posts on the Third Day boards. So instead of searching the boards to see if the guys have posted, all you will have to do is to check here. I'll call all of the posts "Band Sightings".

If you've never read any of the band member's posts, or if you are new to the boards, the first place you will want to check out is the Band Archives forum. That's where we put all the posts the guys do, but you can't post on those threads. So if you want to talk to the members of Third Day on the boards, you will need to catch the thread before it's moved to the archives.

Here are the current posts by the members of Third Day. (To make it easier to find, the band's names are in orange on their posts.)

Brad Avery:
A post about who wrote the song "Without You"
Two posts about his stage amps
Another post about his amps, but in another thread

David Carr:
David thanks the Gomers who contributed to his birthday scrapbook
Explaining how disappointed the band was to miss the Denver and Salt Lake City shows in the spring

Mark Lee:
I'm not going to list all of Mark's posts, because there are a lot of them! Mark runs Book Club on the boards, so he comments quite often. Check out Book Club and see what Mark has to say about books. But Mark has other posts, too.
Ask Mark your questions here
Inviting you to read his blog post about the Christimas Offerings recording session
Talking about a cool new effects pedal in the Musicians' & Artists' Corner

Mac Powell:
Talking about one of his favorite TV shows, Lost
About how disappointed the band was about the postponement of the Denver and Salt Lake City shows this past spring
His new guitar and the Roanoke Rapids show
About his wardrobe (or lack thereof)
Awesome show in Verbena, Alabama
Just a hello to let you know what's up with the upcoming tour

Tai Anderson:
About the spring show postponements
Announcing that the Uganda and LRA have reached a truce
Talking about possibly playing the Parachute festival in 2007

Now that we are up to date, I'll let you know whenever the band members post on the boards. Also, make sure you keep up with the Third Day blog. The guys have plenty to say there.

Pictures from the Shows -- As It Happens!

Mark Lee has been using Typepad Mobile to send pictures and posts from the concert directly and instantly to his Third Day blog. It's so cool to be able to take a picture and then post it seconds later to your blog when you are nowhere near your computer. It's even more awesome for the fans. We all love to look at the pictures from the shows in the tour forums, but to see pictures taken seconds ago during the show, especially the ones Mark has taken while onstage, is just the very coolest thing so far. I love technology! (Sounds like a song cue.)

Bloggers Live For Your Comments

I thought this was funny. It's the comic strip Pearls Before Swine from Friday, June 16, 2006. You will need to click the thumbnail to view the strip.

Group Photos

I just added a Gomer Family Photo Album. You will find it on the left. I've put in 24 pictures of Gomers gathering in various places, at various events. I have more, but I'm saving some to put in specific posts that I will be doing in the future.

I need y'all to send me photos of your Gomer gatherings.