QUIZ OF THE WEEK

Given the outrageous heat we've been dealing with....

You Are Strawberry Ice Cream

A bit shy and sensitive, you are sweet to the core. You often find yourself on the outside looking in. Insightful and pensive, you really understand how the world works. You are most compatible with chocolate chip ice cream.

What Flavor Ice Cream Are You?

How 'bout you?

SURPRISE

I don't normally comment on music on this blog because I really don't follow the music world the way I used to. (When I was a teenager, I ate/slept/breathed music, could tell you who was on the charts at any moment... those days are sure gone.)

But I want to draw your attention to Paul Simon's new CD Surprise. I received it as a Mother's Day gift, enjoyed my first listen... and have since found that I just can't remove it from my CD player. Each listen brings something new.

As always, Simon's lyrics are hauntingly beautiful. In this CD, however, he is less inwardly-focused than he often is, with his ruminations looking at subjects like beauty, God, and aging. "Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone?" he asks repeatedly in Outrageous. But instead of leaving the question unanswered (as he might have in previous albums), he answers: "God will."

And in what I currently find the CD's most beautiful song, he haunts us with "Wartime Prayers"...

Prayers offered in times of peace are silent conversations
Appeals for love or love's release
In private invocations
But all that is changed now
Gone like a memory from the day before the fires
People hungry for the voice of God
Hear lunatics and liars

Wartime prayers, wartime prayers
In every language spoken
For every family scattered and broken

Because you cannot walk with the holy
If you're just a halfway decent man
I don't pretend that I'm a mastermind
With a genius marketing plan
I'm trying to tap into some wisdom
Even a little drop will do
I want to rid my heart of envy
And cleanse my soul of rage
Before I'm through

Times are hard, it's a hard time
But everybody knows all about hard times
The thing is, what are you gonna do?
Well you cry
And try to muscle through
And try to rearrange your stuff
But when the wounds are deep enough
And it's all that we can bear
We wrap ourselves in prayer

Because you cannot walk with the holy
If you're just a halfway decent man
I don't pretend that I'm a mastermind
With a genius marketing plan
I'm trying to tap into some wisdom
Even a little drop will do
I want to rid my heart of envy
And cleanse my soul of rage
Before I'm through

A mother murmurs in twilight sleep
And draws her babies closer
With hush-a-byes
For sleepy eyes
And kisses on the shoulder
To drive away despair
She says a wartime prayer

11 NUMBERS

It's not a big deal to dial 11 numbers on the phone. We do it every time we dial outside our area code, right?

But as of today, folks in my area code have to dial 11 numbers (i.e., 1+area code+number) to dial their next door neighbor.

And it irks me, not because of the actual dialing, or because of the reprogramming (which many folks are griping about, but really it won't take all that long).

It irks me because it's stupid and unnecessary.

Our area code, 310, has just been "overlaid" with a second area code: 424. The reason given was that 310 is running out of numbers. However, there are just under 2 million numbers left in 310. That seems ample for a while to me.

Why the overlay instead of just splitting the area code? After all, 310 was split off from 213. And then 323 was split off from 310. Why not another split?

Well, for some ridiculous reason, people have decided that 310 is a "prestigious" area code, and no one wants to give it up. So even though there's a perfectly obvious place to do a geographic split (at L.A. Int'l Airport, since the neighborhoods north and south of the airport have virtually no social overlap), the powers-that-be did an overlay instead: two area codes covering the same geographic space.

Now the smartest way to create a new area code, it seems to me, would be to assign it to numbers that have no inherent geographic location: Cell phones. In fact, a good portion of the numbers clogging the 310 area code are mobile numbers owned by people who live miles outside the area but want that "prestige." Add to that numbers that don't need to be called -- say, credit card swipers and modems -- and it would seem to me you'd have enough for a good start on an area code.

But, no, that would make sense. So of course the various phone companies didn't agree. (I think it was that the land line companies didn't want mobile numbers to be recognizable.. I have no idea why.)

So we're stuck with the overlay. We're not the only ones, of course. As I understand it, New York has had an overlay over the 212 area code for quite a while. However, there, people can call within their own area code the old-fashioned way, by dialing the actual number.

Clearly the technology exists for seven-number dialing within an overlaid area code. But we are not allowed to use that technology. In fact, the phone companies would just as soon we didn't know it was even a possibility.

Somewhere a bureaucrat of some persuasion is happier because he's just made life less simple for millions of people.

So tomorrow when I want to call my kids' school or my friend down the hill or Cory's best friend's mom, it will take 4 extra numbers to do it. And if it made sense to do it, it wouldn't irk me.

But it makes no sense. None.

MOVIE THOUGHTS: THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

I liked the book, for the most part. With some reservations.

I loved the movie. With no reservations.

The Devil Wears Prada is everything the book wished it could have been: A morality tale anda juicy fun chick flick, all rolled up into one.

A roman a clef, the book was written by Lauren Weisberger, an aspiring writer who wound up as assistant to Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue. While her pen was not as acidic as she thought it was (nor her plotting as fluid as it should have been), Weisberger let us inside the bizarre universe that is the heart of the fashion world.

And a bizarre -- yet beautiful and compelling -- world it is. A world where a size 6 is considered bovine. A world where a woman can admit to eating a cube of cheese a day and be lauded for it. A world where everything -- everything is judged on appearances first, foremost and always.

The movie has an enormous advantage over the book, of course, because it lets us see the fashion, where all the book could do was clumsily drop designer names. Anyone who has ever done any recreational shopping will enjoy the movie just for the sight of "the closet" -- the vast, breathtaking room where designer samples stretch as far as the eye can see, ripe for the taking.

The story of Andy Sachs, the wannabe journalist who takes the job as assistant to dragon-lady Miranda Priestly as a stepping-stone to better things, is elevated here into a true morality tale. Perhaps Weisberger, too close to her own experience, couldn't see at the time just how alluring the siren song of fashion was, couldn't judge her own temptation for what it was.

But this is now, in the movie, the story of a young girl who sells her soul to the devil, just a tiny tiny bit at a time. Beginning with a pair of Jimmy Choos.

And the "Devil," of course, is Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, in a role that had me saying "Oscar nomination" from the moment she swept onto the screen. A breathtaking performance -- perfect to the least little eyebrow hair.

Three moments of Ms. Streep's performance that stand out for me, grounding the movie in a reality that might otherwise have eluded it...

1) "Cerulean blue." Early on, Andy snickers as Miranda and her fashionista (and -o) colleagues ponder which turquoise belt to pair with an outfit. Miranda cuts her down without any effort whatsoever, discussing how Andy's oh-so-practical sweater that Andy probably picked out in part to show her disdain for 'fashion' was in fact, the result of decisions made years ago by the very people in this room that she's so busy feeling superior to. Insightful and oh so true.

2) "The divorce." Somehow the sight of Priestly without make-up is so fully shocking, my jaw still drops thinking of it. We see inside the soul of the dragon-lady at that moment, see the price she's paid for the power and control she wields... see just how she sold her soul to the devil long ago.

3) "They want to be us." The scene in the car in Paris, where Miranda is letting Andy in to the inner sanctum, accepting her as someone as close to equal as Miranda can acknowledge... The moment where Andy has to choose whether to accept the final payment for her soul, or walk away from it all.

Those three scenes should get Ms. Streep her nomination. And well-deserved.

Other good acting work, as well, notably by Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt. Anne Hathaway holds her own as Andy, but just barely. If she didn't have such terrific performances to work off of, she might be in real trouble. But she's fine. The dialogue is clever throughout. The production design (and costuming!) is perfect.

The whole Paris sequence, by the way, as well and the Andy's-boyfriend-and-friends background, has all been radically replotted from the book, and much to the better. In the book, it frankly felt like Andy was making a stupid decision to leave Miranda. Now we see this moment as the pure temptation it is.

The Devil Wears Prada shines as the morality tale it now is. And yet... And yet...

I was talking to a friend up at church last weekend who had already seen the movie with her teenage daughter -- and the second they left, they raced to the mall to go shopping. Bought themselves new outfits, head to toe.

Because even as the movie holds itself up as a clear morality tale about temptation, oooh, the clothes are sooo beautiful. When Stanley Tucci says, about an event happening at a museum, that the real art will be on the backs of the people in the room, he is right. Andy's transformation is sooo stunning. I mean, to sell one's soul for a pair of shoes, that's stupid... but to look like that... to wear clothes like that... what would that be worth?

If a movie is about temptation, I guess it'd better be tempting. On those grounds, Prada succeeds. Oh, does it succeed. My young fashionista, Sabrina, will want to see this movie. I can't afford to let her.

...A cube of cheese a day. I wonder if that would work....

DAY THREE WITH NO KIDS

My kids went off to church camp on Sunday.

They've both gone before, but this is the first time they've both been away during the same week. And for a whole week. Not the same as that glorious kid-free "date" evening when they're both on a sleepover, but we wake up knowing we've got pick-ups to do, and it all comes to an end fast fast fast.

It's one thing to deal with the quiet of a one-kid house, with whichever kid is home luxuriating in a no-sibling zone. Turns out it's something entirely else to have both of them gone.

I wake up and my ears immediately start listening: Is someone playing video games? Is someone trying to sneak pudding for breakfast? Is Sabrina playing her piano, or singing? Are they fighting?

But there's no sounds. Gardeners in the distance. The creaks of the house waking up. That's it.

The chessboard sits on the dining table, untouched. The mancala board sits there, too, untouched. And the Mystery at Hogwarts game (Harry Potter Clue, basically). And the Game Cube. And the GameBoys. All the detritus of kids at home for the summer.

And I sit in my office (really the dining room -- no doors, no protection from bored kids), and no one comes in to interrupt me on the phone, or beg me to go swimming, or complain that reeeeeeeally they need more TV time because it's only Wednesday and they've used theirs up for the week and it's no fair.

And at night there's no one to read "Harry Potter" to and no one to watch "Rock Star" with, and what would Sabrina have thought of Delana's outfit anyway, and which songs would Cory have drummed along to? And Lee and I have all this time to just talk, but you know, we get that anyway.

And Leia wanders through the house meowing with this horrible demanding meow she uses when she can't find her brother Luke. Except Luke's wandering right behind her. So she's meowing for someone else. Someone to dangle her by her paws, someone to wrap her up in a blanket, someone to hold her up in front of a mirror crooning, "You're so cuuuuuute," someone to tease her unmercifully with a feather on a stick.

You know, I was not one of these women who have to have kids. Growing up with no siblings and parents who knew and cared diddly squat about parenting, it was just never a priority. Lee and I from the beginning had the attitude that, well, if we had kids that would be fine, and if we didn't, that would be fine, too.

Except, apparently, it wouldn't have been fine. And nothing reminds me more of that than the echoing emptiness of a house with two bedroom doors closed.

The kids come home on Saturday. I'm sure we'll be sick of them within an hour or so -- "Find something to do!" "You've only been home an hour, how can you be bored already?!"

And all will be well.

And while we're alone this week, all I can think of is Regina, in Virginia with a house full of kids, but with one who will not be coming home. And everytime I miss my kids, I think of her and my heart breaks. And I cry again.

Four more days.

A HEARTBREAKING EULOGY

For those of you praying for Regina Doman, you may want to click over to the website she has created in memory of her son Joshua Michael, who went to be with the Lord on July 8.

The website includes Regina's beautiful, heartbreaking eulogy for Joshna, and many wonderful pictures of her son.

Take a box of kleenex with you when you click there.

God bless you, Regina, and your family, even through such heart-rending pain.

MOVIE THOUGHTS: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!

If you're looking for a serious, issues-oriented movie -- excuse me, "film," Pirates is not the flick for you.

If you're looking for something that stirs your deepest emotions, rubs you raw even, rings true to your own experience, Pirates is not the flick for you.

But it's 108 degrees in the Valley this week, and who really wants issues and raw emotions and anything serious. So grab some popcorn and a really big drink with a lot of ice and maybe even some Junior Mints, and sit back for a couple of hours of pure fun.

You remember "fun," don't you? That element that got left out of movies (good as they were) like X-Men III and Superman Returns. (Superman in particular is feeling the pain of not-enough-fun this week -- At our local multiplex, the big screens were taken by Pirates, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates... and Prada. This during Superman's 2nd week. Oops.)

I loved Pirates, if only because it gives me the chance to employ the much-too-little-used word "rollicking." Because if ever a movie rollicked, this is the one.

I'm a week late talking about it, so by now you've read the real reviews or seen the movie. So I won't cover the story itself (surprisingly convoluted for a summer flick): Suffice it to say that Jack Sparrow is back, escaping from cannibals only to fall into the hands of Davy Jones, of Locker" fame, whose heart is buried in the titular Dead Man's Chest, and who wants it back or bad things will happen.

Is Pirates a perfect movie? No, not at all. The plot is a little overly-convoluted. Orlando Bloom is a block of wood onscreen. Some of the accents get a little thick at times, making patches of dialogue hard to follow. The no-end-to-the-story device occasioned by the realization that this is really part 1 of a 2-part movie doesn't work as well as it should/could.

But it all really doesn't matter. Because Jack Sparrow's back.

Think back to the first Pirates. Also not a great movie, though people who prefer it to the sequel are having a little fun over-praising it at the moment. A textbook case of a movie that became a hit because of its casting. Because without Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow (excuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow), Pirates #1 would have been a huge flop (can you say Cutthroat Island, anyone?).

No, the movie-going world wasn't languishing for lack of a pirate movie three years ago. As it turns out, it was languishing for lack of Jack Sparrow.

Johnny Depp's performance is absolutely astonishing, a joy to watch. It would have been so easy for him to caricature himself in this movie, and, for my money, he avoided doing just that. Not since Harrison Ford hit the screen as Han Solo has a single performance so lit up a summer movie.

Much of the movie is eye candy -- but delightful, creative eye candy. The cannibal-island sequence is priceless, light on its feet, with that scary-yet-not-really tone that's incredibly hard to capture (Peter Jackson could have taken lessons when shooting his somewhat discomforting "native" sequences for King Kong). Best action sequence I've seen (in terms of structure, pacing, invention, and sheer fun) since I-don't-know-when.

The fun of watching for shots from the ride is probably limited to those of us who've spent considerable portions of our life at Disneyland (where, on a hot day, the "Pirates" ride is always a hit for its air conditioning alone). But good for them for tucking those moments in.

Bill Nighy's performance as Davy Jones is spot on, and rather impressive given that all he had to work with were his eyes and his lower lip. Keira Knightly is better than in movie #1 in my book -- gives more of a real performance, less posing. Orlando Bloom, as I said, could walk the plank and I wouldn't miss him.

The effects are terrific -- one or two shots where you can sense the green screen work, but that's just being picky in a movie of this size. Some of the underwater stuff is a bit scary for young kids (Sabrina, who would not want to hear herself described as "young," was seen to cover her eyes a few times, even though she denied it afterwards). The pacing --crucial to a movie like this -- is impeccable -- Kudos to the director and editor for that.

But the real joy is Jack Sparrow -- the oddest pirate ever to sail the deep blue sea, yet such is Depp's commitment to the role, utterly believable at the same time. This is the first summer movie I've wanted to see again -- and if it gets hot enough, that's just where I'm going.

A movie that's just plain fun. What a concept. No, not every movie should have fun as its highest value... but I'm sure glad that for once, someone (lots of someones) worked so hard to make "fun" so vital.

Grab your bottle of rum and your sword and your tri-corner hat and head to the multiplex for a rollicking good time.

WELL, THAT'S A RELIEF

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Of course, how pathetic is it that I'm taking encouragement that I'm still on the right track from an online quiz. Sigh.

Go ahead, take the quiz. What type of writer should you be?

SEARCHING FOR A TITLE

Those of you have been reading this blog for more than a few months know I spent a good half year or so charting the dramatic set-ups and payoffs to be found in Harry Potter here. Well, encouraged by John Granger, I am putting all those essays together in book form.

Because there's so little time to do the whole book proposal/negotiate with publishers thing, and because there's probably a moderately limited market for a book like this anyway (but who knows?!), I'm putting the book out using publish-on-demand technology.

I've edited all the essays together, got them all formatted (need to do some proofreading though)... It's about 250 pages, and a pretty good read, if I do say so myself.

But I don't have a title for the book.

In my mind, I've just been calling it Harry Potter and the End of the Story. But Lee points out (probably with some justification) that the phrase "Harry Potter and the" could easily be trademarked by Warner Bros.

So who has some ideas on what I should call this thing?

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

When in the car, I sometimes listen to a local radio show that's ostensibly about money. However, they veer off into interesting directions and themes. Sure, they'll talk about the local real estate market ad nauseum, but then they'll do an hour on, say, getting your kid into private school, or non-gasoline-powered cars, or something else that isn't purely about return on investment.

Last week, related to the 4th of July, they did an hour on happiness. I turned in midway, so missed the set-up. I therefore have no idea where this particular study came from. But I really liked it.

They offered four major factors that feed into whether someone self-reports as happy. (And the excuse for putting this on a money-related show was that money was not one of the reasons.)

The four factors involved in happiness are:

1. Thankfulness
2. Kindness to others
3. Optimism about the future
4. Forgiving others

Let me just add that this is not a Christian radio station -- I have to say that because this looks like a pretty "Christian" list to me.

I grew up in a household, by the way, that was completely antithetical to this list. Holding grudges was a big occupation when I grew up, as was basically being as pessimistic as possible. As for being thankful or kind -- ha! Let's just say there wasn't a lot of role modeling in any of these areas in my household. Maybe that's why I can look at a list like this and not go, "Well, duh!" It's as if it's in a foreign language, a language I acquired, not one I learned as a native speaker.

It struck me that if one of our inalienable rights is "the pursuit of happiness," it might do us some good to know how to pursue it. Because most of what we're taught will bring happiness certainly doesn't. Maybe a little training in school. Or wouldn't it be nice to see a few TV commercials promoting forgiveness and gratefulness instead of fast food and fast cars?

Just an idea...

PRAY FOR REGINA AND HER FAMILY

Please pray for Regina Doman, whom many of you know as a faithful and insightful reader of this blog, her husband Andrew, and her family.

Her 4-year-old son Joshua Michael was killed yesterday in a car accident in their church parking lot.

There is no greater grief than the loss of your own child. Please pray for Regina and her family.

MOVIE THOUGHTS: SUPERMAN RETURNS

I am not going to write a full review of Superman Returns, because, really, why bother when I can just link you to Leo Partible's excellent review. I agree with probably 95% of Leo's review, and he has lavished much more time and thought on it than I could at the moment.

Let me just say that I loved the movie. I was skeptical going in, and was going to take a lot of convincing (does the world really need another rendition of Superman?). But the movie won me over within the first minutes.

One of the things I appreciated most about Superman Returns was its great respect for the Superman mythos and for what has gone before. Believe me, that is not always (or often) the case with comic book movies. The use of the original music themes -- to great advantage, with more powerfully emotional orchestration than in the original even. The respect for Superman's history and character. The dedication to Christopher and Dana Reeve (applause in our theatre). Certainly the Christological symbolism -- played into instead of away from here, what with Superman falling to earth spread out as if on a cross, and lines like "You say the world doesn't need a savior. But every day I hear them crying out for one." Even the repeating of lines and moments from the original Richard Donner movie ("You shouldn't smoke, Miss Lane.") -- All spoke to an effort on the part of Bryan Singer, the director, to make Superman more important than himself. Kudos to Mr. Singer.

The movie is very well directed indeed. Visually stunning throughout. The action sequence in which Superman saves the space shuttle and a jetliner full of people (perhaps not coincidentally including Lois Lane) is one of the best extended action sequences I have ever seen.

The performances are also very good. I was very pleasantly surprised by Brandon Routh, who seemed a bit wooden to me in the few TV appearances I've seen. I thought he played both Superman and Clark Kent well -- Usually an actor gets one right but not the other, in these dual-role superhero things. I felt his pain for the world as Superman. I felt his pain for Lois as Clark.

I also thought James Marsden was excellent in a role (Lois's fiance) that could have been played as a real schmuck (which would would have diminished our respect for Lois, but would have been the easy way to go, since it guarantees that we root for Clark to get the girl -- here, well, the choice isn't so obvious). And Kevin Spacey -- not an obvious choice as Lex Luthor in my eyes -- was very good indeed. He used all that subliminal rage well, thankfully steering the character away from the ridiculousness of Gene Hackman's performance in the original flick.

I wasn't that crazy about Kate Bosworth as Lois. She got off on a bad foot for me with her stupidity in thinking "catastrophic" had an "f" in it. Once we moved in to the romance, I agree with Leo that she was much better than the campy performance Margot Kidder gave. But every time -- every time Jason, her son, was around her performance became simply ludicrous. In no way could I believe for a second that this girl (yes, "girl," not "woman") was a mother. She treated that poor kid like a prop she was forced to schlepp around.

But like I said, I don't want to talk about the movie. Instead I want to try to figure this out: Why didn't more people go see it?

As you may know, Superman Returns opened... okay. A three-day weekend gross of $52 million, a five-day gross of $84 million. Those aren't shabby numbers. Except...

Except that the movie was predicted to make that $80-some million over the 3-days of the actual weekend. And it was predicted to make anywhere from $105 million to $140 million for the 5-day. (Check out the "Monday Morning Quarterback" discussion on Box Office Prophets to see just how disappointing those numbers are.) And when you realize that Warner Bros. admits to a $260 million budget for this movie (not including prints and advertising, probably not including the various abortive attempts over the years to make a new Superman movie), this movie needed to do waaaaay better than it did.

It should have done better. It was very well reviewed. It delivers in every area -- emotion, excitement, suspense, visuals. And no one needed any explanation to get them in the front door ("Now, who's that Superman guy again?") So why didn't it?

I can think of three reasons:

1) Superman is square. He's old-fashioned. He's not edgy. He's not cool anymore. He's your father's (or grandfather's!) superhero.

I think this may have diluted interest for some (to their loss). But very much to their credit, the filmmakers did not try to "correct" this aspect of Superman. They played right into it (that respect I mentioned earlier), thus remaining true to the character and the mythos, and making a better movie for the choices they made. (Wouldn't we all be happier if, say, Catwoman had remained true to its roots?)

2) Superman is everywhere. In many ways, Warner Bros. spent $260 million+ to bring back a character that no one was really missing and who, in fact, never really left. What with Smallville and Justice League of America, anyone who wants a Superman fix can get one on the small screen. (Can we call TV the "small" screen anymore, now that we're watching mobisodes of Lost on our iPods? But I digress...)

The presence of Superman elsewhere makes the release of a new Superman movie less of an event. And I have to say, if you're going to spent $260 on a movie, shouldn't it be an event? Or, to bring it down to the box office -- if you're going to spend $10 on a movie, shouldn't it be something that you can't see anywhere else?

3) What Superman movie? Where was the publicity for this movie? I saw maybe two TV ads. I saw next to no guest spots on all the obvious TV shoes. Maybe one non-review newspaper story. I saw virtually nothing online (unless I went looking for it). I saw no billboards -- not a one. No bus stop posters. Nothing. Nada. Warner Bros. seems to have thought that because they'd spent so much on the movie, they didn't need to spend anything to get people to go see it.

And they had such a great hook, just waiting, begging to be used. As the movie opens, Lois Lane is about to accept a Pulitzer Prize for her editorial, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." As the movie ends, she is writing a new article: "Why the World Needs Superman."

And that's precisely what the campaign should have been: Why the World Needs Superman! In every venue, via every media, we should have been hearing different takes on "why the world needs Superman" -- everything from top 10 lists on Letterman to 15-second spots with celebrities talking about Superman (Where was Jerry Seinfeld??!) to faux-scholarly op-ed pieces taking the question quite seriously indeed. And everything in between.

All I can say is, if I was a major filmmaker shopping a project, given the dismal marketing given Superman Returns I might be looking at studios other than Warner Bros., just because I'd like the studio to do a little work to get some tushes into the seats.

...Next week, the movie-going tushes of America will be sitting down in front of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which will almost certainly be the no. 1 film of the summer and year. This is bad news for Superman Returns, because Pirates is going to take all those big stadium theatres and push Superman off to slightly smaller screens.

So if you've ever heard yourself saying, "It's a bird, it's a plane..." get yourself to a theatre and see Superman Returns.

Because this is a movie that deserves to be seen.

FIREWORKS

Fireworks are one of the few things I experience that break my usual frames of reference.

For one thing, I like things to fit in a frame. To have definable and preferably predictable dimensions. But fireworks aren't like that.

They go up, and then they explode -- high, low, big, medium, fizzle. You can't predict where the explosion will happen. Or exactly when. Or how big.

I like things to be predictable. But fireworks are not.

And they don't fit into a frame -- literally. Looking at the photos in this morning's paper, showing what I'm sure were spectacular fireworks -- well, they just look lame. They're dead. There's no light. No growth. No sound.

Even in the movies, fireworks are not exciting. They might as well be special effects (and rather dull ones at that). The experience isn't the same once you try to cram fireworks into the frame of a movie screen. (The only movie fireworks I ever saw that I found fascinating were the ones opening Woody Allen's Manhattan -- because they were in black and white.)

Fireworks also break my frames of reference because they don't have names.

I'm a verbal person. I like words. I like things to have names. How can we talk about things if they don't have names? And beyond names, I like labels. I'm the person who reads the label at the museum before she looks at the picture. I wouldn't mind if people walked around with name tags on all the time.

But there are no words for fireworks. Oh, maybe the firemen have names for them, or the manufacturerers. But my bet is the names are based on what the fireworks look like pre-explosion. "Hey, Joe, hand me that big red mortar with the long fuse." Or perhaps they're even more pragmatic than that. "Hey, Joe, hand me an FJ-406."

When I was a kid, my parents took me out to see the fireworks on the 4th of July. Now, they sort of guaranteed I wouldn't really experience them. We parked a long, long way away from the part of the beach where the fireworks were being set off (beating the traffic being more important than enjoying the fireworks), and we stayed in the car (with me in the back seat), watching through the windshield (because even on a July night in southern California, one might catch cold).

But I loved them, as kids always do. And I came up with names for them. The big round ones I called "turkey feathers" (heaven knows why). And I think I called one kind "cloud showers." I don't remember the other names, but there weren't many. After all, back then, there were only 4 or 5 types of fireworks being shot off.

Now, though, there seem to be hundreds. The ones that explode in stages. The ones that send out shooting stars. The ones that shoot off spirals of light. The ones that fire off in different directions. The ones with multiple colors.
And myriads more.

So last night we went to watch the fireworks with our kids, along with hundreds of other folks there with their kids.. We listened to the country music trio playing while it got dark, and we sang along to "God Bless the USA" and "This Land is Your Land," and we all stood up for "The Star-Spangled Banner." (Did they do that at the fireworks displays when I was a kid? I don' t know. I was in the car.)

And the football lights went out as we sang "O'er the land of the free..." And the fireworks started.

And for about 25 minutes, I watched with my mouth open as once again I was taken into a world with no words, a world with no frames, no predictability, no labels. Just unexpected (yet expected) beauty and power and dazzlement. And hundreds of people gasping "ooh!" because we had no other rational way to respond.

As we hiked back to our car, I heard my kids trying to come up with names for the different fireworks. "Weeping willows." "Waterfalls." "Long fingers." I had to smile at them, like me so many years ago, trying to attack labels to the unlabelable.

I think there will be fireworks in heaven. Like these, but better. Maybe even like Gandalf's (with dragons that roar and zoom and disappear in an explosion of light).

And maybe we will get to know what their true names are.

Or maybe not.

I SURVIVED VBS

One of the toughest weeks I face every year is Vacation Bible School up at our church.

VBS is a big deal at Bel Air Pres. We regularly have well over 200 kids there, and many, many of them are not church kids, they're neighborhood kids. Or sometimes kids from smaller churches that don't offer a VBS program. (Or kids of parents savvy enough to know they can get half a day of child care for a week for only $25.)

My kids like me to volunteer every year, so I do. But boy, am I working outside (waaay outside) the area of my giftedness. Working at VBS is absolutely exhausting to me -- I find myself completely drained and really can't get much done the rest of the day. (I am equally drained after Girl Scout meetings. But those don't come five days in a row.) I don't show up expecting to be blessed, believe me. I show up to do work anyone can do (and most can do it better than me), because volunteering is a good thing, they need lots of warm bodies, and my kids like me there.

The last few years I have been volunteering in the area of crafts. There's a lot of rote work there, which I can do, and I'm guaranteed to see my kids when they pass through the craft rotation (when I worked 'snack,' I never saw them, and they didn't like that). And I really like the pastor's wife who runs it, and the other women who tend to volunteer for the same thing year after year.

Also, they now let junior high/high school kids volunteer -- and Cory jumped right in at the opportunity. This was his second year volunteering in crafts -- and he had two other boys from his middle school group with him. "Volunteering" for these boys pretty much meant hanging out together, planning massive water balloon wars against the girls working next door in "Recreation," building elaborate ramps and bridges to roll masking tape down, and sort of being available if we needed errands run or a little help here or there. (This year's crafts were deliberately easy, because of the lack of facilities, so we really didn't need the boys as we have in previous years.)

This year was an especially tough year. For one thing, our church is under construction, so we had no real facilities to work with. The planners worked out a way to use our preschool buildings and preschool/church office grounds for the week, with some kids' classes inside and some outside in playground space. (We in crafts were going to be under a canopy in the parking lot.)

However, the weather did not cooperate with this plan. Let's just say that the coolest day we had was 94 degrees. (The hottest was 101.) And I just stop functioning in heat -- I get heat headaches, and my whole system just shuts down. You could tell it was affecting everyone -- normally we spent a bit of time taking kids to the bathroom during crafts -- I don't think we had one bathroom trip this year -- although we were pouring water into the kids, they were sweating it out before they could pee!

We didn't have it the worst. That prize would go to the team working "Recreation." They had to work out on the hot asphalt, in the full heat without shade -- and they had to spend their whole time running! They were very clever this year, I have to say. Previous years Recreation has consisted of things like dodgeball and capture the flag -- games where big kids have an advantage, games that have to be refereed, games with clear (and sometimes humiliating) winners and losers.

But this year, the Recreation team just planned races -- but races designed around the theme of the week (the Ten Commandments). So on "No other gods before Me" day, kids ran the "American Idols" race, where they had to put money into a piggy bank, race to a TV and other "idols," etc. On "Honor your parents" day, kids ran an obstacle course where they had to do homework problems, throw away trash, hang up clothes and do dishes. Very clever.

Not everything was that well done. The check-in/check-out procedures were a mess for the first half of the week (I can't stand to watch inefficiency and bad planning, drives me crazy). The songs that came prepackaged with the VBS "kit" they chose this year were, as Lee calls them, "toilet paper music" -- i.e., utterly disposable (All the older kids were making fun of them).

But 200+ kids learned a little something about God and were surrounded by over 100 volunteers who really tried to be kind and loving. So all in all a good week.

But very hot. Very very hot. I came home w/ a headache every day, had to take naps, probably drank well over a gallon of water a day. Boy, am I a loser as a VBS volunteer, I have to say! I'm lucky they let me volunteer at all! I am glad, though, for the chance to "work" next to Cory, and for him to see that volunteering for something like this is a habit to get into.

One unexpected bonus from VBS -- and a good sign to me that God can be at work even when I don't see Him.

A couple of years ago I learned about a Christian executive at a prominent production company here in Hollywood. I knew the guy's name, but I had heard he was fairly undercover about his Christianity -- in part because Christians had behaved so badly (i.e., exploitively) once they knew who and where he was. I had wanted to meet him, but never got the introduction.

So there I am cutting felt or whatever at VBS and one of the other volunteers walks over to me and says, "I hear you're a screenwriter." And after a couple minutes conversation, I glance at her name tag -- and it's the wife of that exec -- who has now moved to another company.

Within a day or so, the exec had called our agents to ask to get the spec script we have about to go out, Lee had met him as well, and I do feel like we will at least be going in to meet with him. Maybe more, who knows.

And all I did was show up to count gluesticks.

So in the end, despite the sweating (I hate sweating) and the exhaustion and the crippling heat, VBS turned out to be a blessing for me after all.

I guess God wanted to remind me He can show up and do His work anywhere -- even Vacation Bible School.