{"id":78,"date":"2008-12-15T08:21:26","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T08:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html"},"modified":"2008-12-15T08:21:26","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T08:21:26","slug":"i-want-my-green-mms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html","title":{"rendered":"I Want my Green M&amp;Ms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Green M&amp;M.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/198\/import\/Green%20M%26M.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt;float: left\" height=\"203\" width=\"320\" \/><\/span>As someone who travels to speak 2-3 times per month, I have a simple memorandum-of-understanding that I ask my hosts to sign.&nbsp; It covers things like travel and reimbursements.<\/p>\n<p>When I was a youth pastor, I also booked a couple Christian bands per year to play at our church for big events.&nbsp; Their riders were a bit more exhaustive, asking for items such as flowers and warm, lemon water in the green room.&nbsp; Unfortunately for them, the &#8220;green room&#8221; at our church was the bookkeeper&#8217;s conference room.&nbsp; (I wrote about my unhappy experiences with Christian bands in my chapter of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0310253861?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=theoblogy-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0310253861\"><i>Stories of Emergence<\/i><\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>In both of these cases, there&#8217;s lots of jokes between speaker\/band and host about M&amp;Ms in the dressing room, based on the legendary Van Halen rider that demanded <b>no brown M&amp;Ms<\/b>, meaning the hosts had to sort out the brown ones.<\/p>\n<p>Well now, years later, comes word that this was not an example of rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll hedonism, but a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesmokinggun.com\/archive\/years\/2008\/1211081vanhalen1.html\">savvy business move<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The M&amp;M provision was included to make sure that promoters had<br \/>\nactually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&amp;M&#8217;s were in the<br \/>\nbackstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of<br \/>\na performance&#8211;lighting, staging, security, ticketing&#8211;may have been<br \/>\nbotched by an inattentive promoter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That David Lee Roth is not as dumb as he looks!<\/p>\n<p>HT: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jordoncooper.com\/2008\/12\/13\/links-for-2008-12-13\/\">Jordan Cooper<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As someone who travels to speak 2-3 times per month, I have a simple memorandum-of-understanding that I ask my hosts to sign.&nbsp; It covers things like travel and reimbursements. When I was a youth pastor, I also booked a couple Christian bands per year to play at our church for big events.&nbsp; Their riders were&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I Want my Green M&amp;Ms - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Want my Green M&amp;Ms - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As someone who travels to speak 2-3 times per month, I have a simple memorandum-of-understanding that I ask my hosts to sign.&nbsp; It covers things like travel and reimbursements. When I was a youth pastor, I also booked a couple Christian bands per year to play at our church for big events.&nbsp; Their riders were&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-15T08:21:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Green%20M%26M.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"I Want my Green M&amp;Ms - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I Want my Green M&amp;Ms - The New Christians","og_description":"As someone who travels to speak 2-3 times per month, I have a simple memorandum-of-understanding that I ask my hosts to sign.&nbsp; It covers things like travel and reimbursements. When I was a youth pastor, I also booked a couple Christian bands per year to play at our church for big events.&nbsp; Their riders were&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html","og_site_name":"The New Christians","article_published_time":"2008-12-15T08:21:26+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Green%20M%26M.jpg"}],"author":"Tony Jones","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html","name":"I Want my Green M&amp;Ms - The New Christians","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Green%20M%26M.jpg","datePublished":"2008-12-15T08:21:26+00:00","dateModified":"2008-12-15T08:21:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Green%20M%26M.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Green%20M%26M.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/i-want-my-green-mms.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"I Want my Green M&amp;Ms"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/","name":"The New Christians","description":"Tony Jones on Christianity and the Emerging Church","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074","name":"Tony Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","caption":"Tony Jones"},"description":"Tony Jones is the author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and several other books on Christianity and prayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/author\/tjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}