I’m pulling together a post for tomorrow that I think you’ll enjoy. In the meantime, here are three not-at-all-related things to catch you up on:

1. The Daily Beast: If you keep up with my Twitter feed, you would have learned that, last Friday, I had an article in The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s new(ish) online magazine/news-aggregator. The article is called “The Gospel According to Speidi” and is a look at the faith and shenanigans of professional celebrities Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. Do they really love Jesus as much as they say? Will Christians embrace them at all? What do Christians make of Heidi’s posing for Playboy? Fun questions. Professional Christian celebrity Stephen Baldwin gets a shout-out, too.

From the article:

But the couple’s awkward public embrace of religion has left some true believers flummoxed. The pro-Christian message that Speidi is espousing becomes garbled when blended with TV’s need for sensation and sleaze. Then again, in an era where the church could use a PR boost, Montag and Pratt are providing Christianity the type of pop-culture credibility that could wrangle new followers. Whether this tradeoff is worth it depends on who you ask.

The Daily Beast is hoping to add more religious content, so hopefully you’ll be seeing more of my stuff there in the coming months. If you haven’t read the article, click on over. More visitors = more religious content at the Beast = more work for me.

2. First Triathlon of the Year: On Saturday, I participated in the first of three sprint triathlons I’m aiming for this year. Only it didn’t end up being an actual triathlon. Due to heavy rain before (and during) the event, the bike portion was canceled. So it was a duathlon. Swim 400 meters, then run a 5K. Not quite as challenging, but the fact that all of us contestants were standing, shivering in our swimsuits, in 60-degree weather and constant rain for 45 minutes prior to the start of the competition…well, you might as well have added a third event: The 45-Minute Shiver. Seriously, it works a lot of muscles. On Sunday, I was much more sore from shivering than from running or swimming.

I wasn’t super happy with my swim time — it took most of the 400 meters to get loosened up — but my 5K time (23:17) was respectable. At least for me.

Here’s photo of me swimming outdoors in the rain, taken by my friend James. Check out my funky mouth. It looks like there’s an invisible hook in my bottom lip and I’m about to be reeled in from behind:

3. Pocket Guide to the Bible Review: I don’t typically post every blog review of my books here — seems a little braggy to me (probably because, well, it is) — but this one was just uploaded today and it captures pretty well the flavor of Pocket Guide to the Bible. It’s by Kris Bather, an Australian who blogs at ComicBookJesus. He writes, “Boyett is a guy after my own heart. He speaks to the iPod, broadband, gaming culture with plenty of Gen X and Y references and an approach that’s refreshing without ever resorting to mockery” — which is pretty much exactly what I try to do with the Pocket Guide series.

So I love the review. Thanks, Kris.