The 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years!

I thought this list was pretty interesting. Entertainment Weekly decided to create a list of 100 greatest characters from movies, books, tv shows, etc. from the past 20 years of pop culture. Enjoy!

100. Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights
99. The Bride from Kill Bill
98. Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels
97. Violet Weston from August: Osage County
96. Bernie Mac from The Bernie Mac Show
95. Wilhelmina from Ugly Betty
94. Truman from The Truman Show
93. Game Boys: Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series; Kratos from the God of War series; and Niko Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV
92. Christopher Boone from The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time
91. Hancock from Hancock
90. Marge Gunderson from Fargo
89. Wikus van de Merwe from District 9
88. Napoleon Dynamite from Napoleon Dynamite
87. Tony Stark from the Iron Man series
86. Karen Walker and Jack McFarland from Will & Grace
85. Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood
84. Dr. Gregory House from House, M.D.
83. Jen Yu from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
82. Tracy Flick from Election
81. Amanda Woodward from Melrose Place
80. Gorillaz, the animated rock band
79. Elphaba from Wicked
78. Patty Hewes from Damages
77. Mimi Marquez from Rent
76. Tyler Durden from Fight Club
75. David Brent from The Office (original version)
74. Don Draper from Mad Men
73. Catherine Trammell from Basic Instinct
72. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace from Battlestar Galactica
71. Det. Alonzo Harris from Training Day
70. Mary Katherine Gallagher from Saturday Night Live
69. Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada
68. Effie White from Dreamgirls
67. Borat from Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
66. Allie and Noah from The Notebook
65. Lorelai and Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls
64. Maximus from Gladiator
63. John Locke from Lost
62. Jimmy Corrigan from Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
61. Vic Mackey from The Shield
60. Mary Jones from Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Saphhire
59. Master Chief from the Halo series
58. Thelma and Louise from Thelma & Louise
57. Clayton Bigsby from Chappelle’s Show
56. Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother
55. Tracy Jordan from 30 Rock
54. Juno from Juno
53. Edward Cullen from the Twilight saga
52. Annie Wilkes from Misery
51. Omar Little from The Wire
50. Pearl the Landlord from FunnyorDie.com
49. Vivian Ward from Pretty Woman
48. Red from The Shawshank Redemption
47. Corky St. Clair Waiting for Guffman
46. Jerry Maguire from Jerry Maguire
45. Stewie Griffin from Family Guy
44. Jack Bauer from 24
43. Cal Stephanides from Middlesex
42. Sydney Bristow from Alias
41. Harold and Kumar from the Harold & Kumar series
40. Ron Burgundy from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
39. Gob Bluth from Arrested Development
38. Elmo from Sesame Street
37. Keyser Söze from The Usual Suspects
36. Gollum from The Lord of the Rings
35. Dexter Morgan from Dexter
34. Cher from Clueless
33. Sarah Connor from Terminator 2: Judgment Day
32. Beavis and Butt-Head from Beavis and Butt-Head
31. Forrest Gump from Forrest Gump
30. “Stephen Colbert” from The Colbert Report
29. Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction
28. Madea from several Tyler Perry films and plays
27. Frasier from Frasier
26. Kavalier and Clay from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
25. Woody from the Toy Story series
24. Felicity Porter from Felicity
23. Austin Powers from the Austin Powers series
22. Eric Cartman from South Park
21. Roseanne Conner from Roseanne
20. Ally McBeal from Ally McBeal
19. Morpheus from The Matrix series
18. Sue Sylvester from Glee
17. Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider franchise
16. Bridget Jones from the Bridget Jones series
15. Shrek from the Shrek series
14. Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski from The Big Lebowski
13. Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean series
12. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from The X-Files
11. Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld
10. SpongeBob SquarePants from SpongeBob SquarePants
9. Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City
8. Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs and its sequels
7. Edward Scissorhands from Edward Scissorhands
6. Rachel Green from Friends
5. The Joker from The Dark Knight
4. Tony Soprano from The Sopranos
3. Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Harry Potter from the Harry Potter series
1. Homer Simpson from The Simpsons

-Simon

Glorifying God

After reading Richard Chung's Blog (ricardochungo.blogspot.com), it made me think about what it really means to "glorify" God. We use that word so much, but what does it actually mean? Richard wrote:

Our ultimate goal is not to get to Heaven,

but it is to glorify God. This is where

our greatest joy should come from.

So what does it mean to "glorify"? According to Tim Keller, to glorify something or someone is to praise, enjoy, and delight in them. He says that when something is useful, you are attracted to it for what it can bring you or do for you. However, if he/she or it is beautiful, then you enjoy it simply for what it is. Just being in its presence is its own reward. To glorify someone means to serve them. Rather than sacrificing their interests to make yourself happy, you sacrifice your interests to make them happy. Why? Your ultimate joy is to see them in joy.

What's interesting is that a lot of people tend to think that God is so selfish for commanding everyone to glorify Him. However, God is not selfish (even though He deserves to be). Jonathan Edwards says that God is infinitely happy because within God is a community of persons glorifying each other. It's interesting because he goes onto say that this is basically what heaven is. Heaven is being in a community where we glorify each other; we don't seek for our own glory but the glory of others--but of course God is the center of all of this glory.

But anyway, now going back to the definition of what it means to "glorify". If you really think about it, God glorified us so freaking hard that it's incomprehensible. God doesn't need us. The three persons in the Trinity glorify each other, and that glory is sufficient. Yet, He CHOSE to sacrifice everything and didn't seek his own glory, but the glory of others. Christ came to serve, not to be served. He praised us, delighted in us, and loved us. He glorified us.

Now tying this all in with glorification and heaven, God just wants us to reciprocate the glory because that's what heaven is. Heaven isn't one-sided. God simply wants us to glorify Him because He glorified us. I mean, in the end, that's pretty much what an intimate relationship is, right? Isn't that perfectly depicted through marriage? That is why heaven and marriage are synonymous. Our relationship with God only works if we are mutually glorifying (praising, enjoying, and delighting) each other.

-Simon

Blast From the Past, UA, and Adoption

These past two weeks have been pretty crazy. I've been meeting up with some old old old friends from NorCal who I haven't seen since my sophomore year of high school. One of my friends named Chris Moon came to visit. This guy was the gayest and happiest person I knew. His voice was all high and he couldn't stop smiling (hence the nickname: Joker). But now, he is a 6+ feet tall stud who goes to West Point. His voice is deep, he talks about more serious things (he used to talk about starcraft and counterstrike like all the time), but he still smiles a lot. Then today, I met up with one of my other friends named Byron Chionh. He is one of my favorite Chinese people. He was born in Australia and is crazy at basketball and tennis. I always joked about how he was half Chinese half kangaroo because he could jump so high. It's always fun to see old friends and reminisce about good ol' times.

Last night was the last KCM Upperclassmen Accountability. These were probably one of my highlights of the week, along with small group and the weekends. Especially being a transfer, it was so hard to meet KCM and other campus ministry people. But I feel like because UA was so small (roughly ranging from 7-15 people) and they were all my age group (juniors and seniors), it was so easy to interact with them. Devotions, prayer & praise, Sawtelle, games.. I'm gonna miss it all.

I particularly enjoyed the last UA (last night's). We all sat on the couches after prayer & praise, and we just chilled and talked. We talked about homeless people, adoption, abortion. This is where my whole perspective on adoption changed. I've never really been asked the question "would you adopt?" and honestly, I think before the night, I wasn't really open to it. I'm not sure, I didn't think much about it. I just wanted a "normal" family with all the comfortable luxuries. But hearing about Cho's passion for adoption, it just got me thinking. If I'm so for pro-life and against abortion, why do I feel so indifferent about adoption? In a sense, don't they go hand-in-hand? As Christians, we're all so passionate about pro-life and how cruel it is to murder a baby and our solution is usually "just give it up for adoption". But who actually adopts? I think right now, the gay community have the highest adoption rates because of obvious reasons, they can't have a baby. I don't know, all of this adoption business came all at once at me just these past two days and it got me thinking a lot about it. I mean, even before UA, I saw Blind Side the night before which also stirred some thoughts about adoption. But all I know is, there are millions of testimonies out there where adoption was a huge blessing to the family, and just looking at the Christian faith, we are all adopted as His sons and daughters. Everything about spouses, kids, and adoption points to Christ and the Father because through it, we are able to, in a way, empathize and thus, imitate His love.

I don't know if any of this made sense. But, adoption is good. God is good, always.

-Simon

Ultimate Goal

If our highest goal in life is the good of our family, then we will tend to care less for other families. If our highest goal is the good of our nation, tribe, or race, then we will tend to be racist or nationalistic. If our ultimate goal in life is our own individual happiness, then we will put our own economic and power interests ahead of those of others. It's only when God is our ultimate good and life center where we will find our heart drawn out not only to people of all families, races, and classes, but to the whole world in general.

Once again, the wise words of Tim Keller.

-Simon

Funny Quotes

Funny Quote #1:

(In Sammy's car going to church on Friday. In the car is Me, Sammy, Yoejin, Sarah, and Woohyun)

Me: Hey, do you prefer girls with big eyes or small eyes?

Sammy: Small eyes like Brock?

Me: Hahahaha Brock has REALLY small eyes.

Sammy: I know, I wouldn't even be able to tell if she's awake or not.

Yoejin: What? Barack Obama?

Funny Quote #2:

(Studying in the lounge, Ed comes up behind me and gives me a massage)

Ed: Woah Simon, you're not very knotty! (sounded like naughty)

5 seconds of silence...

Both of Us: HAHAHAHAHAHAAH!

Funny Quote #3:

(Driving to church in James' car with James, me, Yoejin, Sarah, and Patrick. We were talking about a scenario "what would you do if you realized there was no toilet paper left after you were finished doing your business")

Me: Hmm.. I think I'd use my socks.

Sarah: Dude. Just use the toilet seat!

Me and James exchange disgusted face expressions...

Sarah: NO! I MEANT THE TOILET SEAT COVERS!

Everyone: HAHAHAHA!

Funny Quote #4:

(Richard (Chung) and I are walking towards church and it really smells like fish.)

Richard: Dude... I smell like... fish.

Simon: Did you just say you smell like fish?

Yeah... study break.

-Simon

Almost Over

As the school year comes close to an end, I've begun to reflect more and more about my time here at UCLA. It all seems so fast and yet slow at the same time. I think I've become more antisocial, yet more sociable at the same time. I've grown more pessimistic, yet optimistic at the same time. I've gotten smarter, yet dumber at the same time. I am just full of contradictions aren't I?

I'm sitting here, 11:30pm, with lack of motivation to study. There are just so many things that are occupying my mind these days; everything has just become a blur in my head. So what can I do? I just need to take one step at a time, right? I think I took a big step today though.

I was watching some old 2002 FIFA WorldCup videos from my brother's blog. Multitudes of Koreans crowding the streets wearing red, deafening chants in unison, hugs, high-fives, dancing. Korea is one small country, but we are one loud nation. The clip showed the end of the match between Korean and Spain during the sudden death. For some reason, every time we made a goal and the whole nation cheered, I couldn't help but choke. Especially when our goalie stopped one of their goals, seeing a nation celebrate altogether as one brought chills down my spine. What is it about that clip that made me choke? Maybe it was because everyone was just so happy together. Maybe it's because I can identify with them just because I'm Korean. Maybe it's because it was so beautiful to see such a large body of people chanting the same thing, rejoicing over the same thing. I'm really excited for this summer.

Haha, after every entry, even when I don't mean to, somehow I can always tie it in with theology, Christianity, Christ, or anything relating to those subjects. But seriously, it just reminded me of my true identity: my identity in Christ. Just imagine. Heaven. The multitudes will be incomprehensible, the praises will be beyond deafening, the hugs, high-fives, the dancing, rejoicing, all of that as one body being united with Our God. Now THAT brings chills down my spine. I long for the day when Christ comes.

-Simon

Clue of God

St. Augustine in his Confessions reasoned that these unfulfillable desires are clues to the reality of God. How so? Indeed (as it was just objected) just because we feel the desire for a steak dinner doesn't mean we will get it. However, while hunger doesn't prove that the particular meal desired will be procured, doesn't the appetite for food in us mean that food exists? Isn't it true that innate desires correspond to real objects that can satisfy them, such as sexual desire (corresponding to sex), physical appetite (corresponding to food), tiredness (corresponding to sleep), and relational desires (corresponding to friendship)?

Doesn't the unfulfillable longing evoked by beauty qualify as an innate desire? We have a longing for joy, love, and beauty that no amount or quality of food, sex, friendship, or success can satisfy. We want something that nothing in this world can fulfill. Isn't that at least a clue that this "something" that we want exists? This unfulfillable longing, then, qualifies as a deep, innate human desire, and that makes it a major clue that God is there.

Wise words from Tim Keller's book, The Reason for God.

-Simon