C.S. LEWIS ON OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE AUDIENCE

There's a tendency these days, probably an echo of the French-spawned auteur theory, for creative types to pronounce grandly that they are writing their novel/making their movie/writing their screenplay, etc. for themselves. "Really, I did it for myself, not for anyone else." Sound familiar?

This is supposed to show that the creative type in question is a free, independent type, not beholden to anyone, certainly not to any corporate clones. They are above all that groveling to an audience, to a studio, to a network. They are, in fact, really a CREATOR!

We see this in the Christian world as well (often, I think, because the Christians involved haven't thought the matter through and are saying what they think they're supposed to say).

"What's the market for your screenplay?" we ask. "I'm not really concerned with that," we hear in response. "It's really just a story I felt I had to tell." "I just want to do it the way I want to do it."

C.S. Lewis, it turns out, feels somewhat differently on the subject:

...Vanity, though it is the sort of Pride which shows most on the surface, is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration, too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a child-like and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are, in fact, still human. The real black, diabolical Pride, comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty, not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason; namely, because we care so incomparably more what God thinks. But the Proud man has a different reason for not caring. He says "Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? And even if their opinions were of value, am I the sort of man to blush with pleasure at a compliment like some chit of a girl at her first dance? No, I am an integrated, adult personality. All I have done has been done to satisfy my own ideals -- or my artistic conscience -- or the traditions of my family -- or, in a word, because I'm That Kind of Chap. If the mob like it, let them. They're nothing to me." In this way real thorough-going pride may act as a check on vanity; for, as I said a moment ago, the devil loves "curing" a small fault by giving you a great one. We must try not to be vain, but we must never call in our Pride to cure our vanity.

50,000 AND COUNTING

Sometime over the weekend, the visitor counter on this blog clicked over past 50,000.

Wow. It is hard for me to believe that over 50,000 pairs of eyes have bothered to check out what I might have to say.

But I am grateful to you all. (Especially those of you who leave comments!)

Thank you for reading. I'll keep posting.

Can't wait to see how long it takes to get to 100,000!

MOVIE THOUGHTS: THE PINK PANTHER

I can't really recommend this movie.

Don't get me wrong. I howled with laughter throughout. As did my entire family. We were almost on the popcorn-strewn floor, we were laughing so hard!

But not everyone else in the theatre was laughing. At one point, Cory even leaned over to me and said, "I think everyone else in the theatre must think we're really weird." To which I sensibly replied, "Shhhhh!"

Could it have been funnier? Sure. Blake Edwards would have carried the metal-globe-rolling-through-the-streets bit through the whole movie -- He might even have taken out Kevin Kline's character with it.

But boy did we laugh.

What can I say? Maybe I've been hanging around with an 11-year-old boy long enough that I can't resist a good fart joke.

Steve Martin is, as always, so committed to his character as to be hilarious. Kevin Kline is fine, but his accent goes in and out (not that it matters). The plot is ludicrous, as it should be. Beyonce is rather wooden, but again, does it matter?

All I know is, our family will never again be able to say, "I would like to buy a hamburger" without bursting into laughter. Or look at elaborate wallpaper without the thought of "camouflage" popping into our minds and causing us to giggle in a probably totally inappropriate situation.

But I'm sure you all are much more sophisticated and erudite than we are. So please, don't think I'm recommending this movie. I wouldn't do a thing like that. Really. (giggle giggle)

LOVE POTIONS: SET-UPS AND PAYOFFS

Yes, believe it or not, I have not abandoned Harry Potter in the middle of writing, serving, teaching, momming and daughtering.

I realized as I went through my notes that while I was doing my set-up and payoff readthrough last fall, while abed with pneumonia, my interest in Spells and Potions must have been fairly minimal. I just didn't take that many notes on them, only on the ones I thought might have some set-up/payoff interest. So please know that I know that this walkthrough is quite incomplete.

l want to take a look at a few of the Spells and Potions that seem to be in need of a payoff. But first let's take a look at the exquisite set-up and payoff structure running through Half-Blood Prince regarding...

Love Potions

Even though the Love Potion set-up and payoff structure only starts in HBP, I think it's a marvelously tight example of how we move from set-up to payoff to unexpected payoff.

We first meet our Love Potions at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, where Fred and George are doing a brisk business in "WonderWitch" products [HBP-6]. And note how deftly the set-up is tossed off -- We learn that Fred and George are selling love potions, they assure us that the potions work, and then we swoop off sideways to what we think is the real meat of that scenelet, a discussion of all the boys with their tongues hanging out over Ginny.

We learn more about Love Potions in our first class with Slughorn:

"Amortentia doesn't really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room -- oh yes," [Slughorn] said, nodding gravely at Malfoy and Nott, both of whom were smirking skeptically. "When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love..." [HBP-9]

Note how much we're getting out of this scene. We get more introduction to Slughorn's character -- can anyone imagine Snape teaching how to brew love potions?! We get a hint that Hermione is indeed at least a bit in love, since she declines to say what she smells in the love potion (What could it be -- Ron's stinky sweat socks? Definitely a detail to ask JKR!).

And we get two important set-ups: One for the Romilda-tries-to-trick-Harry storyline... and one that explains much of what we will learn about Tom Riddle. All tossed off in, again, what seems like a character-based moment, not a plot point.

It may seem as if Slughorn was waxing a tad romantic in saying that Amortentia is "the most dangerous" potion in the room. But as it turns out, he was exactly right.

For we see very soon after this scene how Merope used love potion (following Dumbledore's almost certainly accurate surmises) to trap Tom Riddle, Sr. into a sham of a marriage [HBP-10].

"Most dangerous" potion, indeed! For without it, Lord Voldemort would never have been born!

That's one set-up paid off. But we still have to pay off all those love potions lining the twins' shelves. And we do of course, when Romilda Vane tries to slip Harry chocolates full of love potion [HBP-15]. Our set-up here takes an unexpected twist, however, when it's not Harry who eats the love potion, but Ron [HBP-18].

And now suddenly we have two sets of set-ups colliding. Harry drags Ron to Slughorn for help, Slughorn whips up an antidote, they all celebrate with a little oak-matured mead -- and Ron almost dies of the poison, causing Harry to search frantically for a bezoar.

And with one little set-up, all of a sudden we are (a) reminded of that ever-so-important first Potions class with Snape; (b) warned yet again that the security of Hogwarts has been breached; (c) sent down a possibly (?) false path of suspecting Slughorn's loyalities; and (d) handed a blatant hint toward the ultimate unraveling of the book's plot:

"He could be under the Imperius Curse," said George. [HBP-19]

What masterful plotting and spinning indeed, to pull all this together with what was really a little throwaway moment! I am expecting that much of Book 7 will be like this: We will get to watch in amazement as all the puzzle pieces (some of which we didn't even realize were pieces of the puzzle) fall together.

Will we see Love Potions again in Book 7? I don't think we need to, given how complete this payoff line has been. But I just wanted to point out the beauty of it all.

Next post, on to discuss Spells and Potions I think we may (or will) see in Book 7.

BAJA OR NOT...

Well, I am supposed to be heading out of town tomorrow, for a nice long weekend in Rosarito Beach (in Baja California, which, I had to point out to the cell phone customer service guy who turned out to be based in Alabana, is actually Mexico, not the U.S.). Our writers group is going, along with all our families. We have been planning it for months, and it should be lovely.

It may, however, have to be lovely without me.

I got a call today informing me that my mom (who is legally blind, walks with a cane, and has dementia) had fallen and broken her wrist, as well as contusing herself all over. Stitches everywhere, evidently.

She was supposed to take the bus to her Braille meeting today. However, because she believes the bus driver dissed her two weeks ago (she showed up at the bus stop an hour early, and was upset when he didn't come), she refused to ride on the bus and tried to walk. She fell off a curb. Lee pointed out that this was a very literal instance of "Pride goes before a fall."

She has a caregiver who comes in every day. But her caregiver, it appears, has had it with her, and is refusing to come in over the weekend. She is trying to arrange for an substitute, but my mom never cares for any of her subs.

So, with my mom unable to remember just how it was that she got this cast on her wrist (though she remembers the bus driver supposedly dissing her!), and with her all freaked because her regular caregiver isn't there, I may have to stay in town.

Not that there's anything I'm needed to do. But my cell phone may not work where we're staying, which would make me unreachable. Just in case.

Lee thinks I should go to Baja with the group. He feels that if I stay, my mom may figure she's found a way to make me jump every time she calls, and could be likely to go out and hurt herself again on purpose. (He's sort of feeling there's a strong demand for attention even in this accident.)

But I'm not sure. Am I feeling a sense of responsibility or a sense of guilt? Again, I'm not sure.

I'm in limbo right now. Packing my kids' suitcases, but not my own. Just sitting here waiting for the phone to ring -- the same as I would probably do all weekend if I stayed home.

I thought I was going to post a 3-day hasta-la-vista here. And maybe I am. I guess you'll know (as I will) once the weekend rolls around -- if you see blogging in this spot, you'll know guilt (or responsibility) won the day, and I stayed in L.A. while the rest of the gang went to Mexico. Otherwise, see y'all next week.

C.S. LEWIS ON LOVING YOUR ENEMIES

Between trying to get writing done, and prepping for meetings, and doing all the advance work for a few days out of town in Mexico this weekend (with little to no help from the other 15 people going), I have simply not finished my "Spells and Potions" Harry Potter essay, as I would have wished. My apologies. I will try to jump back into it next week... (Yeah, yeah, you've heard that before...)

But I have finished re-reading Mere Christianity, and bookmarked a couple more extended quotes that caused me a lot of thought. So I can at least post that much...

Loving your enemies is, of course, one the truly radical concepts contained within Christianity. Not that we see it much practiced. For a whole lot of Christians, hating the sin comes easy. But loving the sinner -- well, we've got a lot of reasons why that really isn't appropriate.

Take your favorite public sinner. Say, Hillary Clinton -- now there's someone a lot of Christians love to hate. How would you feel if she repented of whatever sins you may have ascribed to her? ... Maybe a little disappointed? Or is it a possibility you won't even imagine?

That's why I love (and hate) this passage from C.S. Lewis that carries those attitudes to their conclusion:

...I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man; or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: How could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life -- namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: Being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.

The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, "Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that," or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall inisist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: We shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

CULTURAL MAGNETS

Courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor and Brewing Culture comes this list of "cultural magnets" -- which is to say, those cultural moments which act as glue to bind us together as a culture and community.

Once upon a time, a three-network world, we all watched the same thing -- or even if you did skip, say, the "Who Shot J.R.?" episode, you knew enough about what everyone was talking about to chime in. In our increasingly fractured (and fractious) world, do we have any 'Cultural Magnets' left?

Here's the CSM's proposed top-10 list. What do you think? How many of these do you partake of? Do you have others to suggest?

1) Breaking News

History in the making, with all of us glued to our TVs as it happens. Election night. The tsunami. Katrina. 9/11. These are images that not only keep us watching and can unite us, but often spur people to real action.

2) The Super Bowl

An average of 90 million people watch the game every year. In 2005, 10 million more people watched than voted in the last election. Even if they were just watching for the commercials.

3) New Year's Eve / The Fourth of July

Both holidays are culturally defined by outdoor spectacles: Billions of people worldwide tune in for at least a glance of New Year's in Times Square, and millions head out to watch fireworks with neighbors and strangers each 4th of July.

4) Oprah Winfrey

America's most powerful celebrity and most trusted person, Oprah's endorsemeent means millions in hard cash. Her influence is so pervasive that she was single-handedly blamed for people avoiding hamburgers because of her comments during the mad-cow scare in 1996.

5) Harry Potter

Over 250 million copies sold in the U.S. alone, and over $1 billion in ticket sales at the box office, Harry has brought families together around a story, and has not only gotten kids to read thousands of pages voluntarily, but has spurred an increase in reading across the country.

6) American Idol

A show which draws from the diversity of all 50 states, and consequently looks more like the "real" America than any other. Selling the "new" American Dream -- that elusive 15 seconds of fame -- AI relies on that most American of institutions -- the democratic vote -- to stand as an icon of "interactive" TV.

7) The Oscars

Even though only handfuls of people have seen this year's five Best Picture nominees, millions and millions in America -- and up to a billion around the world -- will still watch the Academy Awards.

8) Cyberspace hangouts

8) Cyberspace hangouts

Think of Craigslist, the city-based classified ads listing site which racks up 3 billion page views each month. Or MySpace, the teen-dominated board which claims membership of 50 million and gets more hits each day than Google, eBay and Amazon combined.

9) The Da Vinci Code

It may be a literary hodgepodge and flaming heresy to boot, but the book, with its 29 million copies in print worldwide, has created a cultural maelstrom in which everyone has to take sides, whether they've read it or not.

10) U2

Heirs to the Beatles as the only truly global rock band, U2 is a unifying force across generations and cultures, with Bono blazing new trails as a humanitarian and political activist.

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

Here's my count: I watch the SuperBowl (for the commercials mainly). I tune in on New Year's Eve and would never miss fireworks on the 4th of July. I watch American Idol with my kids (but rarely vote). I wouldn't miss the Oscars, and have thrown Oscar parties for the last 10 years or so. I have bought a fair amount of stuff on Craigslist, and troll job listings there from time to time, though I have never gone on MySpace. I have read The Da Vinci Code, so my opinions would be informed (and gagged over it, btw). I've definitely got some U2 tracks on my iPod. And what am I missing here...? Oh, yeah. Harry Potter. Um, yeah.

Surprisingly enough (to me at least), while I was glued to the tube for days after 9/11, I rarely watch breaking news. Idiotic and biased news anchors drive me so crazy, I usually can't handle it for long. I saw very little tsunami or Katrina footage (but read everything I could about it). And I don't watch Oprah.

But 8 out of 10 isn't bad. (And watching even a little breaking news may take me to 8.5 out of 10.)

How about you? And what other "cultural magnets" should be on the list? (I'll nominate the Olympics, for starters.)

BACK FROM VEGAS

Well, I'm back from Vegas.

Somehow, going there with an actual purpose, rather than just for fun, was a little disconcerting. It made the contrast between the Strip and the real world a bit more obvious. I think I was more glad to be home when I got back than I have ever been on a return from Vegas (of course, that could have done with the drunk, stinky smoker in the seat next to me on the turbulent plane ride home!).

A couple of thoughts...

--The new "ticket" system in the slot machines, where you no longer deal w/ actual cash, actually makes it a lot easier to keep track of how much you've lost. (I don't think that was the idea -- I think the idea is to make you more captive to one casino...)

--The people who rated the Rio's Seafood Buffet the "Best in Vegas" were big, fat liars. And the casino you have to walk through to get to the buffet was the sleaziest, most unsafe feeling one we were in.

--The new Wynn casino is really not that impressive inside.

--There are some seriously weird insects of some kind in Vegas. I don't know what kind. But I came home with about 8 HUGE bites, scattered all over my body (back, ankles, wrist, shoulders, etc.), all of which got infected immediately and swelled up to scary proportions. Not mosquitoes, not fleas, not spiders, at least not from my usual reaction to bites. Just now starting to go down. Anyone knows what kind of biting insects would live in the desert (either by the Paris pool or in the carpet at the church we spoke at, are my only guesses), you let me know.

--The new penny video slot machines feel more like going to a video arcade than gambling. And because you actually win from time to time (thus partially mitigating your expenses), you can actually play for far longer than you could play at an arcade (I played for probably a total of about 10 hours over 3 days -- and spent appx. 1/4 what I would have spent on the same amount of time at, say, Dave & Buster's).

...Okay, the real world beckons. I need to get to work and earn some money. But I will get back to the blog, with more C.S. Lewis as I continue to read (should finish Mere Christianity tonight), more on other books I've read recently, more on the biz, and of course, more Harry Potter (Spells and Potions, here I come!).

Thanks for hanging around...

PUT IT ALL ON RED, BABY!

I have so much to blog about.

I'm working my way through my "Spells and Potions" Harry Potter set-up and payoff post. I'm fascinated by the discussion about the Oscar nominations going on. I want to go over the books I've read so far this year. I feel guilty that I haven't yet pushed the Act One Executive Program, which is now accepting applications. I have several more C.S. Lewis quotes that have been intriguing me and which I want to post.

But first, I'm off to Vegas!

Two and a half days of video poker, swimming pools, and margaritas. Oh, yeah, and teaching for Act One.

Let me tell you, Vegas with Barbara Nicolosi is definitely a fun time. I fly out tomorrow, and I'll be back Saturday night, just in time for my birthday. (Isn't it nice of them to throw a Superbowl to celebrate my birthday?).

I'm not taking my computer, so won't be able to blog unless either Barb has hers, or I feel so twitchy without checking my e-mail that I seek out the hotel's business center.

But I'll be back in a few days. So don't forget me, huh?