OH THE PAIN, THE PAIN....

So Cory did his magic show. (See yesterday's blog). And evidently he totally bombed.

The kids he wanted to be his "volunteers" couldn't do it or weren't there. His first volunteer left the key card on the table when he cut the cards, messing up the stacking of the deck and making it impossible to complete the trick. Cory dropped the cards. He says he did it "accidentally-on-purpose." Who knows?

Trick two also didn't work, though he says he completed it. But he won't give details. And this is a kid who can talk without taking a breath for half an hour if he wants to tell you something. So I'm suspicious. And he ran out of time before he could even get to trick number 3 (which was his best one).

Sigh.

I have a friend, a single mom, who, soon after her daughter was born, commented to me that being a mom just meant there was one more way for people to cause her pain.

On the one hand, how very cynical. On the other.... how very true. (Isn't it unfortunate that being cynical usually means you're right?)

All I can say is, I know God gets it. "Do not let me be put to shame," David says. That tells me God appreciates what it means to be embarrassed.

Blowing a 3-minute magic act is a little thing. I know that. But at least it brings up a good prayer.

Do not let me be put to shame. Or my son, either.

PICK A CARD, ANY CARD

I just sent my son Cory off to school to make a fool of himself.

I hope that's what won't happen, of course. But it could. It really could.

Today is the school talent show. 3rd through 6th grade, 3 minutes each. Most 3rd graders don't even sign up, feeling a bit abashed before all those mighty upper-graders.

But Cory signed up. And he didn't even sign up to do some stupid skit with a bunch of other 3rd graders (the invisible chairs, etc.). No, he signed up to do a magic act.

We did indeed buy him a magic kit a couple of years ago. But he's never used it. He's not one of these kids who spends all his time practicing card tricks. In fact, he started practicing card tricks, oh, about three days ago. Hence the real possibility of his making a fool of himself. In front of all those mighty upper-graders.

It's a risky thing to stand up there in front of an audience all by yourself. You and a deck of cards.

We learned this a couple of summers ago, when Cory announced that he wanted to do a stand-up comic routine at our church's summer talent show. We got out the joke books, pulled camp jokes, church jokes, rewrote them, put them in order.

And a very gracious and talented professional comedian (Robert G. Lee) from our church took time out from his day to coach Cory. And as I watched the pro behind-the-scenes, I could only gasp, "What you do for a living is a really dangerous thing!"

And Cory steps into the jaws of on-stage-without-a-net danger again today. Magic is easily as dangerous as comedy. All those peering eyes, just waiting for you to mess up.

We prepped him as much as we could. Practiced the tricks for as long he as could stand it. Gave him three nicely stacked decks of cards, one for each trick, just in case (what?! Magicians stack their decks?! I'm shocked, shocked!). We went through lists of kids he could ask to be his volunteers, to weed out the potential trouble-makers.

But in the end, it's just him. I don't even get to be there to watch.

I feel like I'm getting just the least hint of how God feels when we step out in faith. He's prepped us all He can. But ultimately, we're the ones who have to step onto that stage all alone. God waits in the wings, urging us on ("You can do it!" "You totally rock!"). He focuses on the things that really matter (switching the cards at just the right time) while everyone else is distracted. But He lets us stand or fail on our own.

Cory is not that hot a magician. If you're looking, you can definitely see him flip the key card in the second trick. (Heck, if you're not looking you can probably see him flip the card!) And, truth be told, I am not that hot at walking in faith.

But God has prepped me as much as I would listen. And now He sends me out, ready to rejoice in my triumph, expecting a triumph. But ready to console me in the case of humiliation. And knowing either is possible.

Here's hoping for triumph -- not humiliation -- in the proving ground of faith that is the upper-grade talent show today.

TV THOUGHTS: JOAN OF ARCADIA

Okay, so I'm a little late with the Joan of Arcadia finale. I had to tape it. I'm a huge fan of the show, but I can't always count on watching it live, because my kids are still up. Cory loves the show. And I love for him to watch it. Sometimes. But when it gets to "Joan thinks God wants her to have sex" -- well, I think I'll watch that one without my nine-year-old, thanks.

And the season finale -- "God stops talking" -- also looked like one I wanted to watch alone.

And I'm glad I waited. 'Cause it came at just the right time.

The thing I love (increasingly) about this show is that it takes risks. The premise is risky enough. And one might think that is enough: A teenager talks to God. Now we can fall into a Touched-by-an-Angel-like pattern: Every week, the same basic thing happens, we have a "moment" with God, final credits roll.

But as we reach the season closer, Joan doesn't rest there.

Indeed, God stops talking. And Joan starts questioning. She's sick, she's been led to believe she's been having hallucinations -- Indeed, to keep things from getting too neat, she does have at least one hallucination (or was that an appearance by the devil? And how would we know the difference? In real life as well as in fiction?).

And she decides, in her sickness and disappointment, in her weakness, that God isn't real. A daring place for the season to end -- and a promise that next season will take us into some deeper places than we could have hoped for.

But for me, the moment that made the show worth thinking about (worth blogging about), was the final couple of shots.

Joan has decided God isn't real. She's in the hospital, weak, sick, sleeping.

And God walks in (in our favorite manifestation as "Cute Guy God"). He's not remotely a hallucination -- Joan is asleep, unable to hallucinate, unaware of his presence.

God walks over to Joan. Looks at her. Touches her hair (Is this the first time God has touched Joan? I think so). And leaves.

I loved that moment. It made me think: How many times has God been caring for me, loving me, concerned for me, when I was simply not aware of his presence? It's so easy to say, oh yeah, omnipresence -- but somehow God being present everywhere all the time doesn't always translate emotionally as God present, here, with me, right now. And sometimes it seems as if God is only present if I'm aware of His presence.

Those final moments of Joan put flesh on God's presence for me. Gave me an image to hold on to when I feel as weak and unaware as Joan (which is often enough).

Many thanks to Barbara Hall for a courageous, beautifully written and produced first year. And special thanks for the promise of an even better, more challenging, more rewarding, and bolder second year.

TV THOUGHTS: THE SWAN

Okay, I want this on the record. Neither Lee nor I has ever watched The Swan before. And I doubt strongly that we'll go back to it next season.

But last night we both hit a writing break at the same time, saw the season finale was on, looked at each other, and said, "Why not?"

We've read the controversy, the articles stating the show is a travesty, an insult to the woman involved. I've even gotten e-mails from some of my more radical-feminist friends insisting we boycott the sponsors.

So we tuned in.

And it really was pretty embarrassing. A fake beauty pageant, cheap through and through, featuring woman who, frankly, are still not quite pretty enough for a real beauty pageant, wearing gowns so cheap you could see the seams puckering on national TV.

Even the plastic surgery was cheap. All the woman looked the same! The same cheekbones, the same puffy lips. Clearly their plastic surgeon runs a sort of assembly line, where he creates a certain look, whether you want it or not. The Thomas Kincaid of plastic surgery.

And it was indeed embarrassing to see these woman blatantly equating their self-worth with their appearance. I think the real drama of the show begins now. Will their lives change now that they have new faces? Yes, people will certainly respond to them differently. But will that be enough?

So the show was everything the detractors said it was. And on top of it all, as cheesy as anything I've ever seen on TV. No sense of humor at all.

And yet....

If someone offered me a free makeover -- a little post-childbirth tummy tuck, maybe some lipo here and there, a nice teeth bleaching, perhaps a shot or two of Botox -- all for free....

I'd probably take it.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'd say yes before they finished making the offer. And if the only price was that I had to wear a bikini on TV -- hey, I'd wear a bikini down Wilshire Boulevard if I had the body for it. With a navel ring.

I understand completely why these women said yes. I saw the "before" pictures -- these are not women who ever got a shred of (positive) attention for how they looked, believe me. And maybe they knew they were being exploited, humiliated, whatever. That's how important physical attractiveness is in our society. When you look like you're "supposed" to look, people treat you better. Especially in L.A.

We can say looks are superficial. We can say beauty is skin deep. We can celebrate a movie like Shrek (the original), where the beautiful girl becomes ugly, and it's okay because it's who she was meant to be. But our society's values are clear every time you turn on the TV, pick up a magazine, even see who gets waited on first at a department store.

I have an idea for a TV show. I'm going to call it The Owl. 16 not-so-bright women are sequestered for 4 months. They go on a strenuous regimen of learning, memorizing, brain teasers, studying.... And at the end of that time, they go on national TV to take tests in public. The smartest woman wins.

Think any of the networks'll pick it up?

No? .... Then maybe the problem isn't The Swan.

IN A DIFFERENT WORLD

I was reading in today's Variety a review of the new Cole-Porter-biopic De-Lovely. Not that I'll probably get to the movie before it gets to DVD. But the rave for Kevin Kline's performance included a line that made me sit up and pay attention:

...Kline also supplely conveys a personality who could simultaneously be both present and not, completely there for his wife or a friend, but with his mind on something else, such as a lyric...

Writers are always hard characters to write. They don't do anything. They just think. But it's more than just thinking. It's living in two worlds simultaneously. And how lovely to see that captured, apparently in Kline's performance, and certainly in this review.

I have been living in turn-of-the-(last)-century Galveston for the past week or two, not always fully present in this world, as we rush to finish a script. (A friend in our writers' group tried recently to describe what current-day Galveston is like -- I just shook my head and said, "I've never been there, I've only been there 100 years ago.")

Lee is much worse at this than I am. (Or better. Depends on your point of view.) I will have long conversations with him, then realize he hasn't heard a word I've said. He's somewhere else, even if his body may be standing right in front of me. (Cory does this too. Uh-oh.)

The comment in Variety made me think about this altered state. A few thoughts...

--It's a necessity of work. If I can't escape into another world, I can't write.

--But it is an escape. And that part of it -- well, is it a good thing or not? I'm not sure.

I do know that during this last week, I have needed an escape. Horrible, bizarre things have been happening. Complete strangers attacking me verbally, unprovoked, out of nowhere. Over the phone. At Costco. Devastating. Frightening.

Lee sees the whole thing as yet another manifestation of the truly nasty spiritual battle that has been coming down on us for a while. Be that as it may, it sure left me with a need to escape.

So I locked myself in my office, didn't talk to a soul, didn't leave the house unless absolutely necessary (after all, why go back into that world where people are so gratuitiously nasty), and headed back 100 years.

A survival mechanism. A good one? I don't know.

--Finally, I think, in a weird way, the "mental traveling" into another world gives creative people a heads up, a different view on what it means to be in the world but not of it. That's not a theoretical state of being for us. It's a normal occurrence. Not in the spiritual way that Paul meant it, of course, but it's not a far leap to get from here to there.

So, what this all boils down to is, really... an excuse for why I haven't been blogging much. I've been elsewhere. Hiding from the darkness without. Traveling to the story within.

I'll be back very soon. I promise.

WHERE WILL YOU BE....?

My son was given an odd assignment at school this week. He has to write a letter to his 12th grade self. He has to think about what his dreams, hopes, aspirations, loves will be at that age, and give himself some advice.

A cool idea -- Actually probably better for us as adults than for a 3rd grader. What would you write to yourself 9 or 10 years in the future?

But the thing that made me sit up and think was my part of the assignment. I had to send in self-addressed stamped envelopes (with 2 stamps each -- who knows what postage will be in 9 years!). One addressed to our current address. And one addressed to someone I know will be able to reach us in 9 years.

And it made me sit and think.

I can't guarantee we'll still be at our current address in 9 years. We work in a mercurial business. Paying a mortgage has not always been easy. We could easily lose our house by then. Or we could decide to take advantage of the insane L.A. market and cash out. Who knows where we'll be in 9 years?

And who do we know whom we can guarantee will be at the same address in 9 years? For most people, the answer is fairly easy. They'll send it to a grandparent, a brother or sister.

But the only grandparent in our family is my mom, who is old, blind, and rapidly losing her memory. Will she still be alive in 9 years? Unlikely. Will she still be able to live on her own if she is? Even more unlikely.

I'm an only child. No brothers and sisters to address a letter to. I have a stepbrother in northern California, whom I see maybe once a year. But no guarantees he'll live in the same place in 9 years. Lee has a much older half-sister in Idaho. But we see her much much less often, and again, no guarantees she'll stay put.

And that's it. We have no other family. We are it. So where do we send the letter?

I thought through our friends. We are blessed with the most wonderful friends in the world.

When we sold our spec script Smoke and Mirrors in 1993 and hit the big time in the industry, a producer we were working with told us bitterly (when he'd had a bit too much to drink), "You better keep the friends you have, 'cause you're never going to make a real friend now for the rest of your lives."

Thanks be to God, and to the family of God, that has not been true. I can absolutely guarantee a whole list of people we'll be in touch with in 9 years. I could absolutely count on them to be faithful to forward Cory's letter to us.... But where will they be at their same addresses? Probably not.

Some will buy up... and move. Others will cash out... and move. Some will leave the industry... and move. Let's face it, L.A. is not the kind of place where people stay put.

A simple assignment. Address a couple of envelopes. But it tortured me for days. I didn't turn them in on time. I just couldn't figure out what address to list.

... Finally, I addressed the second envelope to our church. One address I know will not change. It will not move. And we will not move -- we've already weathered the worst there, so I can't imagine what could drive us away. I addressed it to Cory, c/o the High School Ministries (which freaked me out in itself!).

Someone there will know where we are in 9 years. Someone will care enough to forward an envelope, if necessary.

The Church is meant to be our rock. Our home. Our family. Sometimes, when it comes right down to it, it's the only place we can go.

TRAVEL THOUGHTS: WASHINGTON, D.C.

My deepest apologies for the delay in blogging. A whole week! Shame on me!....

I was too swamped (and too jet-lagged) to blog in D.C., and have been having a purely crappy week since I returned -- and thought I'd spare you any venting!... I hope I haven't lost you all. I have visions of people logging on, saying "Well, I guess she's quit her blog," and never coming back. So I hope you all are still there!

Okay.... Washington, D.C.

Lee and I were there to teach a couple of classes for Act One, which is being very graciously hosted at George Washington University. A lovely facility, and they're treating us very well. Always makes a program work better when that's the case.

The students seem pretty sharp. It seems a bit odd to us even now: Somehow we expect that the L.A. students will always be the real prizes -- after all, easily half of them have already made some kind of commitment to the entertainment industry. But that's not the case. We've had a couple of weaker years in L.A. (always with individual stars among the crowd), and our very best program ever was the away program in Chicago 2 years ago. So who knows? Maybe these D.C. students will be the future Act One star alums.

Somehow Washington seemed to turn on its worst weather just for us. 90 degrees, sticky and awful. With everyone insisting, "Last week it was in the high 60s and just beautiful!" Gee, thanks.

Lee and I took our afternoon off to take a look at the new WWII Memorial. Hideous. Absolutely awful. Like something the Nazis would have put up. Granted, the pool wasn't filled, and I'm sure it'll be better with water to cut the glaring, steaming acres of bare granite. But even with water, it'll still be ugly. What a shame. If anyone deserved a great memorial...

While my personal favorite D.C. memorial is the Korean War Memorial (the ghostly soldiers, the asymmetry, the "Freedom is not free" wall... ), I don't object to formal memorials. The Lincoln Memorial is staggering, truly a place that makes you stop and meditate.

The WWII memorial will be good for one thing, however. Anyone who sets up a lemonade stand, an ice cream cart -- basically anything cool -- will make a mint. Unshaded, heat-reflective rock'll do that to you. Again, what a shame.

We never adjusted to the time change all that much, which meant we were getting up at about 4:00 a.m. every day (subjectively). But it worked to our advantage at night -- I could stay up and watch the late night talk shows w/ no problem, knowing it was "really" only 8:30 at night! A nice little treat.

And it was nice to actually get to watch the spectacular Game 5 between the Lakers and the Spurs (sorry, any Texans who might be reading this -- but we were happy!) -- Had we been at home, we probably would have been too busy to sit back and watch a whole game, and would have had to see Derek Fisher's phenomenal game-winning-in-the-last-four-hundredths-of-a-second shot on the news.

We also watched some local news, and were sort of shocked at how... well... ugly the D.C. newscasters were. Compared to L.A., I mean. Gee, does that mean the D.C. news folks might actually be... journalists? (As opposed to the "newsmodels" of L.A.)

I head back to D.C. in two weeks (that soon? Yikes!). One more class to teach. Just me this time, Lee stays home with the kids. I will miss my daughter's annual preschool reunion, her end-of-the-year Brownies party, and my son's end-of-the-year "portfolio" party (where his class shows off their work), plus I will miss teaching my class at UCLA. Such dedication. I hope Act One is paying attention to all this dedication.

All I can say is -- When I get back, those cicadas had better not have shown up. I can't believe Act One shows up during the one month out of 17 years when a biblical plague occurs! Tell me: Do I believe the warnings on the local news and in the local papers? Bugs everywhere you step, flying into your salad if you eat outside, noise like a jackhammer? Or is it like rain in L.A.: Even for a drizzle, the local news will go to "Storm Watch 2004!" with special graphics and music.

I hate bugs. Someone please, tell me my return to D.C. won't be like a visit to "Fear Factor." Please.

MOVIE THOUGHTS: A WRINKLE IN TIME

I felt compelled to watch A Wrinkle in Time on ABC Monday night. I didn't have high hopes, but I have loved the book since I was in about 5th grade.

(And -- full disclosure here -- Lee and I were the runners-up for the job of writing the movie (back when it was going to be a 4-hour miniseries). They loved us, but Susan Shilliday (whom we respect greatly as a writer, given her legacy of thirtysomething), had already written a feature script on the book, and they figured they'd have a headstart if they went with her.)

Good thing I didn't have high hopes for the movie.

How they managed to take a book so full of joy and glory and wonder and turn it into something so pedestrian... it boggles the mind.

Mostly the blame lies at the feet of a cheap network, I'd have to say. Sets that looked like something from Star Trek (the original series). Cheap special effects. For the most part, incredibly bad casting. And some of the most boring direction I've ever seen.

My pettest peeves, in no particular order:

•Camazotz. The whole point is that the place looks normal, maybe like something out of The Truman Show, not like some cheap video game world. Bad model work. I think it was a mistake not to use the rhythmic aspects of Camazotz more effectively as well.

•IT was kind of a washout. But you know, that's one we can't blame on the filmmakers. When you try to visualize the book, you realize there's not much one can do with a really big brain to make it inherently scary. (Although Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix does a nice job with the brains that trap people with their tendrils of thought....)

•Meg and Calvin. They're supposed to be smart. Meg O'Keefe was one of the first heroines I remember reading who was smart, and I loved her. Here, well, she knows one or two more things than her biology teacher (but who doesn't), and that's it... In the book, we learn how smart she is through her interactions with Calvin. But here -- well, Calvin's just a dumb-looking jock. How could anyone believe that onscreen character as a future scientist?! Truly horrible casting.

•Charles Wallace, on the other hand, wasn't bad. Not inspired, not what we might have gotten from a 7-year-old Haley Joel Osment, but not bad. And the movie did make me realize that any movie version of this book relies on the believability of Charles Wallace.

•I also liked -- most of the time -- the Man with the Red Eyes. Some of the new scenes they added here were quite creepy and pretty much worked.

•The Mrs. Ws. Pathetic. A friend of ours, an actress who was staying with us for a few days, walked in during the middle of one of their scenes, stared at the screen in disbelief, and said, "Why are those women 'ACTING' so strenuously?" They were stupid. Not fun. Not wondrous. Just embarrassing.

In particular, although they managed to get the important lines out ("What have I got that IT hasn't got?"), they completely blew the gifts that the Mrs. Ws give Meg before she goes to rescue her father. A lovely, profound scene, one with stuff to chew on for days and years... and they muddled it up completely.

•And don't get me started on the embarrassment that was the Happy Medium!

But here's my BIGGEST objection to the movie:

A Wrinkle in Time is a profoundly, subversively Christian book. The movie did everything it could to strip the Christian basis of the story away. Even one of the reviews I read (L.A. Times? Hollywood Reporter?) mentioned that the movie lost the "whimsy" and the spiritual foundation of the book, and that it failed as a result.

A couple of examples:

In the book, the children take a ride on the back of Mrs. Whatsit, transformed into a sort of winged centaur. They hear other such creatures singing in a strange language. Charles Wallace tries to understand, to translate, and almost gets it. So Mrs. Whatsit translates for them:

The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them: "Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhanbitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountainsl Let them give glory unto the Lord!"

Throughout her entire body Meg felt a pulse of joy such as she had never known before.... joy flowed through them, back and forth between them, around them and about them and inside them.

In the movie, Charles Wallace listens vaguely to the noise and says, "It's something about joy, right?"

Oy.

Second example. After the children see the Black Thing surrounding Earth, in the movie, the Mrs. Ws recite a list of people from earth who are fighting the darkness. Many of the same ones are mentioned in the book: Gandhi and Beethoven and St. Francis and the like. But they sort of forgot how that passage opens in the book:

"And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe it's being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it's a grand and exciting battle. I know it's hard for you to understand about size, how there's very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won't seem strange to you that some of very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it's done so well."

"Who have our fighters been," Calvin asked.

"Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs. Whatsit said.

Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, "And the light shinest in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."

"Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why, of course, Jesus!"

Um... any guesses as to whether that passage made it into the movie.

...Sigh. Very sad. It should have been a feature, of course, $100 million with glorious effects. But even more than that, it should have had integrity. And whimsy. And joy. And wonder. And a sense of the hand of God.

And it did not.

Go re-read the book instead.

OFF TO D.C.

My apologies for the light blogging over the last few days. We had a house guest leave yesterday, we have another one arriving tonight, and we're heading off to Washington, D.C. in appx 36 hours.

We'll be in D.C. for a few days teaching some classes for Act One. On Thursday (on very little sleep, if I read my itinerary correctly), Lee and I will teach an all-day seminar on "Choosing Your Story."

We've been teaching variants of this seminar for years now, and probably will overhaul it again soon. Nevertheless, we have spent sooooooo much time reading scripts that never should have been written (because the stories were so sucky), we feel it's an important class for beginning writers. If your story isn't good, all the skill and passion in the world won't make it so.

Sometimes, reading these hopeless scripts, I feel like the knight in the cave at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (my favorite movie, btw). I watch as a script starts promisingly, then withers to dust in front of me, and want to say meekly, "You chose... poorly."

Saturday, I'll be teaching my seminar on Screenplay Structure. I'm always energized teaching this one. I walk the students through the standard structures -- the three-act structure, the Hero's Journey -- and then I outline the structural system that Lee and I came up with because we found the 3-act structure paradigm just didn't provide enough of a guideline for us.

Someday we will publish our structure system and get very rich. (Okay, we'll publish it and... have it published. That's good enough.)

In the meantime, we love to share it with our students, we use it ourselves every time we write... and we make sure to let our students know it's copyrighted! (Imagine my shock when a former student came up to me at an event to brag about how she was teaching my system to her own students -- expecting me to jump up and down for joy!)

In between those two very exhausting days, we have a day off. We've done the Mall, done the various museums, the last time we were in D.C. Anyone out there have any suggestions of how we could spend our day? (Assuming we thwart the temptation to stay in our hotel and sleep?)

And then back home to see if our kids still remember us. Whew!

I'll try to blog from D.C.... If I have anything to say, other than "What's the number for room service again?" Ciao!

A VISIT FROM THE TOOTH FAIRY

We have told our kids the truth about Santa Claus from way before they could even understand what we were telling them.

I have taken quite a bit of flak from other moms for this. "You'll ruin Christmas for them!" "What a terrible thing to do to your kids!"

But here's the thing. When I was a kid, I figured out the whole Santa Claus thing pretty early on. And after I figured it out, I went along with it for a couple of years, pretending I still believed.

I didn't mind so much that my parents had lied to me -- although I think this was my first realization that parents could lie to their children.

What I hated was lying to my parents for those two years. I learned a lot from it, though. I learned how easy it was to lie to your parents and make them believe what they wanted to believe. I learned that sometimes they'd rather hear a lie than the truth, and of course, I wanted to oblige them... and did so well into my college years and on.

I didn't particularly want my kids to learn any of these lessons. Also, I didn't want to deal later with questions like, "You didn't tell us the truth about Santa Claus, so why should we believe you about Jesus?"

From the get-go, we told our kids that Santa Claus is the fun "pretend" part of Christmas, and Jesus is the real part of Christmas. Some years, they have defiantly informed us that they will believe in Santa anyway, because they want to. Fine. At least they can't say we lied to them.

(Okay, now fire your e-mails and comments at me about what a mean mom I am. I've heard it before.)

Once you've dealt with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny is a breeze. I mean, what's the point of the Easter bunny anyway? Very clearly, a distraction from Jesus's resurrection, is all. And who needs all the candy anyway? So we've never done the Easter bunny -- our kids get Easter baskets that are light on candy and long on other gifts.

But the Tooth Fairy kind of snuck up on us.

Maybe because she (it is a she, right?) isn't related to any Christian holiday, I wasn't concerned. And Cory, with his scientific bent, was clearly mostly interested in the cash the Tooth Fairy would bring.

But Sabrina, as it turns out, takes the Tooth Fairy very Seriously Indeed.

She lost a tooth two days ago. We didn't have a $5 bill on hand--
(Yes, $5. It's a scam on the part of the kids in our neighborhood. I'm convinced they meet secretly in the street to plan the Tooth Fairy shakedown of their parents, all of whom can then be heard to grumble, "You know when I was a kid, we got 25 cents, mutter mutter mutter.")

As I was saying -- we didn't have the cash, and I was off teaching at UCLA that evening and never saw the tooth. So Lee persuaded Sabrina to save it in a ziploc bag.

And the next day, we lost it. At school, around the house, who knows? It was gone.

A distraught Sabrina was near tears. I persuaded her to write the Tooth Fairy a note and tell her what happened. She wrote two notes, clearly the work of a True Believer.

Here are her notes:

#1) "Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost my tooth. It is in a bag. Could you please find it for me? Love, Sabrina B. P.S. If you find it, could you let me know please." (And then a line for the Tooth Fairy to check off "Yes" or "No" about finding the tooth.)

#2) "Dear Tooth Fairy, What is your name? Please write it here. Thank you. Love, Sabrina B."

And as I read these immaculately-printed notes, that ol' Santa Claus guilt started to creep up on me.

We scrounged up a $5 bill. Lee snuck in to her room at about midnight to slip it into the pocket of her little "lost tooth" pillow (a gift from a former babysitter). He didn't write on either of the notes, for fear she would wake up (as she did on one other lost tooth occasion).

In the morning, she was quite upset that the Tooth Fairy hadn't answered her questions. I heard her muse to herself, "Maybe she didn't come."

Uh-oh. Guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt.

But she seemed happy with her $5. (As well she should!)

So here I am, lying to my kid, after swearing I never would. At least, I console myself, it's not about the things of God. Sigh.

...(P.S. And in case anyone asks, the Tooth Fairy's name is "Dentina.")

HARRY POTTER: ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD

I was trolling around on amazon.com the other day and discovered, to my shock and eternal bitterness, my book about Harry Potter.

Well, not my book, obviously. If it were mine, I'd be urging you to buy it and cashing my royalty checks. But it was a book that was more or less the same idea as mine -- life lessons from HP.

If you read my earlier blogs about this, you know that I didn't get a publishing deal because every interested publisher was scared to death of promised lawsuits from Scholastic Books...

That was right when HP4 was released, before the first movie came out. Now, of course, there are tons of HP books out there -- commentaries, fan books, etc. So somewhere between then and now, someone changed their mind somehow. And someone else had the same idea I had...

But only you get to read my essays... Not too many left, but finding that book on amazon made me feel the need to post one... This one, believe it or not, was written before the world of "Reality" TV took hold as strongly as it has, before American Idol and The Apprentice. (How prescient am I!)..... Hope you enjoy.

--------------------

It's pretty clear Gilderoy Lockhart hasn't done much to deserve being famous. He even admits to Harry, Ron and Hermione, in Prisoner of Azkaban, that he didn't actually do any of the things he claimed to have done in the best-selling books he required them to read. Break with a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Holidays with Hags, Travels with Trolls... All of them, all fake.

No, Lockhart's fame rests on his good looks, his freshly-curled hair, his spectacular robes, his fine eye for publicity, and of course, his aware-winning smile. Lockhart's all style, no substance. All glitter, no gold. He's famous for being famous.

Not only that, but Gilderoy Lockhart assumes everyone else wants to be famous, too. Lockhart assumes Harry wants to be famous, from the moment he first glimpses him. Of course Harry wants a life of publicity, book signings, fan clubs. Doesn't everyone want that?

We live in a world of Gilderoy Lockharts.

Just about everyone does want to be famous. Or rich and famous (even better). We idolize people simply because they look good. Or because they make us laugh. Or they can sink a jump shot.

Or because they have a number one song (whether we like the music ro not), or a number one movie (whether we saw it or not). After all, if it's famous, it must be good, right?

Out here in the Muggle world, kids abandon their hometowns to come to Hollywood, chasing a wisp of a dream. People line up to get on talk shows and game shows and reality shows. All because that few minutes of TV will make them important... make them famous.

Look at the TV show Survivor. About 8000 people applied to be on the first show. But when Survivor II came along a few months later, something like 50,000 people tried out! Why? Because they saw the show as a shortcut to becoming famous, to becoming a household name, to getting on the cover of People magazine.

"If I eat a bug on TV, it'll jump start my career as an actress." Perfectly logical, right? Anything for fame.

Well, Harry Potter's already famous. And he hates it.
Think about it. What would it be like to be recognized everywhere you go? To have people you've never seen before know your name? To have people always talking about you behind your back, telling the story of your life, even making it up? To have people resent you without even knowing you? Or idolize you without even knowing you?

Here's what it's really like to be famous: People you don't know want things from you.

In Goblet of Fire, Ludo Bagman wants Harry to win the Triwizard Tournament. Why? Because he's bet big on Harry to win. Why? Because Harry's famous.

Rita Skeeter wants Harry to provide the story that will keep her name in the spotlight. Why? Because Harry's famous.

Even little Colin Creevey wants Harry to notice him, hoping Harry's reflected glory will somehow shine back onto him.

None of these people really know Harry. Bagman doesn't give a rip about the agony Harry's gone through after being chosen as a champion, nor about the dangers Harry's facing. Rita Skeeter doesn't care if Harry's embarrassed or hurt by what she writes. And Colin can't get past his idol worship to realize that Harry's a real person. All of them care about Harry for one reason and one reason only. Because Harry is famous.

Harry's fame even poisons his relationship with Ron, his very best friend. Ron doesn't want anything from Harry. No, he wants what Harry gets: attention. As Hermione points out to Harry in Goblet of Fire, Ron is secretly jealous of Harry. Harry doesn't even have to try, and he gets attention, while Ron has to compete with five older brothers and constantly gets shoved aside, ignored.

Is there anyone out there who really cares about Harry himself? About the person behind the famous name and the universally-recognized scar? Very few peopole indeed. No wonder Harry hates being a celebrity.

What's really interesting, though, is how much alike Harry and Gilderoy Lockhart are. Not in their reaction to fame, obviously: Harry would do anything not to be famous, while Lockhart loves fame, craves it, breathes it.

Yes, they're different in their reaction to fame. But here's how they're alike: They're both famous for not doing very much.

Don't take this the wrong way. Harry is no Gilderoy Lockhart. He definitely has substance. Even at the age of 11, Hermione recognizes that Harry's going to be a great wizard.

But, like Lockhart, Harry's celebrity isn't based on anything he's done. After all, he was only an infant when he stopped You-Know-Who. He had no magical skills, training, nothing. He didn't even know what was happening when he stopped Voldemort. And he didn't do it alone -- clearly his mother Lily's sacrificial love for Harry was the main factor.

By the end of Goblet of Fire, of course, Harry has done much to earn his fame. But virtually none of the amazing things he's done are known to the public -- the Rita-Skeeter-reading, gossip-chewing, fame-adoring public. So he's still pretty much famous for... well, for being a baby who survived a collision with Voldemort. For being The Boy Who Lived. Nothing more.

The big difference between Harry and Lockhart isn't in how (or whether!) they earned their fame. The big difference is in their reactions to it.

Most of us will never be famous. We'll never give an Oscar speech to anyone but our own reflection. We'll never sing on a stage bigger than our shower floor. The closest we'll ever get to a SuperBowl ring is sticking our nose up to the TV screen.

But we can choose how we feel about that. Am I resentful, regretful, that I never got a shot at being famous? Do I feel like a failure because the world doesn't know my name? Do I try, like Gilderoy Lockhart, to live in a world of publicity rather than a world of reality?

Yes, we live in a world where (almost) everyone wants to be famous. But you don't have to buy into that. You can choose instead to concentrate on being a good friend (as Harry does), on doing what's right (as Harry does), on doing the best you can at your work (as...well, as Hermione does), on finding out who you really and who you're really meant to be.

It's a choice of style vs. substance. "All that glitters is not gold." People who are showy, who attract a lot of attention, often don't deserve it. Often there's no reality, no substance underneath all the glitter.

And the flip side is true as well. To borrow the line from J.R.R. Tolkien, All that is gold does not glitter. There are people who do deserve attention, who do deserve acknowledgement and honor -- but we never notice them because they're not showy and spectacular and glittery.

The choice is yours: Who would you rather be: Harry Potter, or Gilderoy Lockhart?

GOODBYE, FRIENDS

This Thursday, I will do something that will shock my children. I will set the VCR to tape Survivor, leaving the fate of our beloved Rupert to wait a day or two. I will shoo them to bed early. And I will sit down with a bowl of popcorn and a box of kleenex to watch the final episode of Friends.

So rarely has a show been so well-written for so long. So rarely has a show been so perfectly cast. (So often have I wished I look like Jennifer Aniston!)

I don't expect this final episode to be all that funny, frankly. There's too much emotion bound up in its finality, for the audience, writers and cast alike. The last few episodes, the cast have been walking right past the funny lines, as if they're working too hard not to cry.

And I'm calling it here: Ross and Rachel will of course get together -- but not until the last 30 seconds (or less) of the show. They've pulled off so many last-second surprises at season ends, and done it so well. How can they not do the same thing to us as they leave? (Of course, if we all know Ross and Rachel have to get together, it's not that much a surprise -- so let's see if they can surpass expectations again...)

Now, I can't say I endorse Friends whole-heartedly. Not by a long shot. They spend waaaay too much time on sex for an 8:00 show -- enough that my kids have never been allowed to watch even a scene. I consider the show to have a huge culpability the "normalizing" of pornography, because of the way the male characters on the show treat it as normal (in turn, because the show is run and written to a large degree by gay men, for whom porn is "normal" -- but that's another blog).

But it has always made me laugh. It has always made me care what would happen next. It has always made me jealous of the quality of the writing. And those are all increasingly rare commodities.

I'm sad that Friends is ending, and not just because I'll have a half hour less laughter each week.

I'm sad because it's virtually the only scripted show I watch anymore on TV. And as a writer, that grieves me.

I watch (and tape) West Wing. I sometimes watch (but don't tape) a few others: Raymond, Joan of Arcadia... But that's about it.

The rest of my limited network TV time is devoted to "reality" shows, most of which I watch w/ my kids: Survivor, American Idol and, without the kids The Apprentice. And we are breathlessly awaiting the return of The Amazing Race, the true jewel among "reality" shows.

I want to watch scripted TV and support my fellow writers. But frankly, I'm bored. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. I'd rather read a book. Or surf the Web.

(A chilling thought, as the Writers Guild of America continues its negotiations for a decent contract, its current contract already having expired.)

So good-bye, Friends. Thank you for being part of my Thursday nights for 10 years. You will be missed. And I dare you: Surprise me in the last 30 seconds.

IN THE PRESENCE OF OUR ENEMIES

We experienced a great blessing this weekend that has just stayed with me.

Actually, it all started last fall. We were going through some very tough times. Incredible tension everywhere we looked. We could sense the spiritual battle surrounding us.

And one day, out of nowhere, in the mailbox, was an anonymous card. It read:

"God has prepared a table for you in the presence of your enemies, and He has invited you to a feast at His table, just to let you know that He loves you."

Unsigned. Untraceable. And inside the envelope -- a $200 gift certificate to a top-of-the-line restaurant in Beverly Hills.

We were blown away. We tried to suss it out -- Who knew what we were going through? Who of those people would come up with the quote from Ps. 23, tying it all to spiritual battle? Who would be likely to be in Beverly Hills to make the gift card purchase?

And then we gave up and just thanked God.

Well, $200, even at a BH restaurant, is a lot for two people. We just don't drink that much! So we invited another couple, who at that time were painfully out of work, to join us as their Christmas present.

It took a while to actually get to the restaurant, obviously. (We tried back in February, but a freak power-out during a rainstorm closed the restaurant for the evening.) (Yes, it does rain in L.A. At least once a year.)

As we sat down to dinner this weekend, we found ourselves facing an uncertain, possibly unpleasant future.

And yet, amidst all that, there we were, laughing and feasting, from the lemon drop martini (that would be me) and more sedate pinot noir (everyone else) through the 3" thick melt-like-butter filet mignon all the way to the 'chocolate sin' cake. Somehow the awareness of being "in the presence of our enemies" made it more a feast.

Even -- maybe especially -- when beset on all facets by enemies, it's good to have something to celebrate. Even if the only thing to celebrate is the celebration itself.

We are grateful to our anonymous benefactor. We are grateful to our non-anonymous Benefactor.

And I hope that you, too, whatever enemies you find yourself surrounded by, will find a table spread before you, and a reason to celebrate.