CHRISTMAS IN THE E.R.

I am appalled with myself (and apologetic toward anyone still checking on here) for this immense gap in my posting here. Perhaps the title of this post gives a hint of a reason (or perhaps it is merely an excuse).

About 10 days before Christmas, I came down with bronchitis. Not that unexpected -- Sabrina and Lee had both had mild colds, and I get bronchitis out of a cold every 2 or 3 years. It really wasn't too bad -- the first few days, I was able to keep symptoms at bay with just strong black tea and chicken soup. But I was trying to finish responding to producers' notes on a script, and Christmas was coming, so I put off the blogging.

Then the bronchitis got a bit worse. I started with over-the-counter meds. I'd feel better for a day -- then worse for two. Not a good pattern, you can see. But by now we were up to the weekend before Christmas, and I had a lot piling up --packages to mail, shop, wrap, present-exchanging to arrange and show up for. So who had time to be sick (or to post)? I just kept pushing myself, even though I was clearly not getting better. Worst was a nasty gut-wrenching cough.

Someone suggested I try Mucinex, which I had never tried. Okay, why not? Turns out it has the same active ingredients as Robitissin (expectorant and cough suppressant), but at four times the dosage. Wow. It sure worked -- in a sense. It made my coughing much more, um, productive, but also more violent. But also kept them under control enough so that I could keep going, so all was well.


But I wasn't getting better. Lee was concerned that I was heading for a bout of pneumonia, as I had had three-plus years ago. Sorry. I didn't have time for that (or for posting here, as I had just no extra
energy to spare).

So I made it to the day before Christmas, when I had a shopping/lunch date with a girlfriend. We're sitting happily at California Pizza Kitchen solving the problems of the world when I have to cough. 'Excuse me,' I manage to say --and proceed to cough --and suddenly am engulfed in so much pain I can't see my friend sitting across the table. Everything goes white and bright and all I am aware of is pain pain pain.

I didn't tell my friend what had happened, though I doubt the rest of my conversation made much sense. But I still wasn't done with my shopping. Other than new ski gear, I hadn't bought a single item of clothing for Sabrina and I still hadn't bought the kids their Christmas ornaments for the year. I was at a mall with two hours left to shop, and incredible price reductions going on all around me.

I couldn't do it. In fact, I could barely walk. I stumbled to the nearest store, grabbed the most pathetic ornaments I have ever given the kids, and called Lee just long enough to grunt out something like, "Pain. Hurt. Don't know what I did. Can't finish." And then, through some absolute miracle of God, somehow I drove home.

I have no idea what really happened at Christmas Eve services. I was there, but I was wholly focused on trying to breathe through the pain (and let me tell you, Lamaze breathing was really no more helpful than other was I'm childbirth). We went out to dinner with some good friends and their in-town-for-the-holidays family, and somehow I made it. And we stuttered through some of our Christmas Eve rituals -- we lit the last candle on our Advent wreath, and opened one present each. But we skipped Jesus' birthday cake.

Now, as I struggled to get to bed, I was getting worried. I could barely move my right arm in any direction without enough pain to make me scream (literally). And I couldn't cough. It hurt too much. And I knew how dangerous that would be. If I couldn't cough out all the yucky stuff piling up in my bronchial tubes, I would get pneumonia.


I was up most of the night, and Lee probably was, too. I was up enough for my mind to take a blessed mental inventory of my medicine chest. And when I finally dragged myself up in horrid pain in the morning (where my phenomenally patient kids had been waiting for 2 or 3 hours already, I dug waaaay in the back of an old basket of pill bottles, and found two lonely Vicodin. Who cares that they were over a year expired? They got me through Christmas morning with the pain muted down to a dull roar.

And that's how I ended up at the emergency room on Christmas Day. When I came in complaining of shortness of breath and back pain, boy, did I get seen right away. It was only as I realized that they were rushing to get me an EKG and asking all kinds of questions that I realized they were checking to see if I was having a heart attack. Of course I wasn't, but I do recommend those complaints if you want to be seen quickly in an E.R. (It wasn't crowded; I wasn't keeping anyone from being seen who should have gone first.)

Everyone was incredibly nice. My doctor was a handsome young man in his 20s who reminded me of our friend Ocean up in Seattle (also a doctor). My nurse, Mike, rushed on every time I coughed to see if I'd brought up anything interesting. And after a breathing treatment with a nebulizer and a nice portable X-ray, they told me I did not have pneumonia --but that I did have a fractured rib.

I guess I don't know the power of my own coughing.


So they loaded me up with Vicodin (to blunt the pain of that rib and make it possible to do things like cough and sleep) and an inhaler (because the type of bronchitis I have is "asthmatic bronchitis" in which it's harder to breathe out than in, and because I told them I was headed for an altitude of 7000 feet, where there would be considerably less oxygen to breathe in the first place), and Prednisone (because I apparently I also had a touch of pleurisy, a disease which seems much too Dickensian to exist in 2008, but which is ultimately just an inflammation around the lungs).


And off we went to the mountains, so I could sit and read, and drive everyone else to the ski slopes, and play with my new iPhone, and cook, and take my meds, and recuperate.

Oh, and actually, finally, perhaps unbelievably, post on this blog after an unheard-of almost-three-week gap.

I'm back. Sorry for the delay. More to come now.

And let's hear it for Vicodin.

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

Of course, it doesn't look like the Christmases one sees on Christmas cards. Not when you live in L.A.

Looking like Christmas here means sunny, in the low 70s. The rare trees transplanted from back East (the maples and such) are brilliant orange -- but since you only see one or two standing alone at a time, I doubt it has the same effect. And the sky is crystal clear -- You can see the mountains clearly etched on one side, across the ocean to Catalina Island on the other side.

Doesn't sound like Christmas to you? Well, at night there are lights on houses (not all that many lights in our rather Jewish neighborhood, but enough). Businesses have put up the obligatory tinsel and wreaths. And there are enormous sale signs in the window of every store.

Last year we barely celebrated Christmas. It was the most miserable Christmas of my life, that's for sure, what with being on strike, being uprooted in every way.

This year is different. It will be a downsized (and potentially miserable) Christmas for many. But, thankfully, not for us. We're working, we're at peace. It's a nice feeling -- and so appreciated after last year's horrificness.


It's finals week now, and I'll be turning in grades today. I delivered a book proposal yesterday. I'll finish printing and delivering my kids' school applications today. That means (aside from some pesky tweaks to our script for Paramount), I can spend the next two weeks focusing solely on Christmas.

Our tree is up (we drive about 50 miles to a Christmas tree farm to cut a live tree every year). It's not decorated, to be sure, but it's in the stand, being watered constantly, and three huge tubs of decorations are piled up next to it waiting for someone to be inspired. That someone will probably be Sabrina -- I just don't really like decorating trees. Maybe it's childhood memories of my dad's combined hatred of the task plus obsession with making it perfect. Maybe I just don't like being scratched by the needles. But Lee and I will perform our traditional "first-hanging-of-the-ornaments" -- we have a knight in armor and a lady on a white steed that kiss before they're hung (and we kiss), and then we relinquish the rest of the decorating to the kids.

My cards are out (I was the obsessed one this year, insisting on getting them out starting Thanksgiving weekend, as we are about to move and I wanted to get the new address mailed). I don't think I've ever done the Christmas-picture/Christmas-card/Christmas-newsletter/trip-to-post-office thing so early before, so it feels great.

We're not throwing a party this year -- not until we're moved, so we'll revive our Christmas party with a vengeance next year. That makes the season easier and more peaceful, too. No invites, no RSVPs, no caterer, no rush to decorate in time, no party favors... But I will certainly look forward to the revival of the party after a two-year gap next year! And with 2 parties last weekend and 6 parties this weekend, I don't think we'll feel deprived.

Now it's just the traditions and the presents. I haven't started shopping, though we know what the kids' "big" gifts are this year, so it's just a matter of going to the right store. We're trying to focus our presents on people who are unemployed (or underemployed) this season, with token gifts for everyone else. That makes the season easier, too. Also, sadly, it's easier to do presents for my mom this year -- I could probably wrap up things she already owns and she wouldn't realize the difference... We'll probably have to work hard just to make her realize it's Christmas.

I'm looking forward to the shopping, actually. I'll make a shopping date or two with a girlfriend, have some fun with it, enjoy all those drastic price reductions out there. And if I really want to cheat, I'll run over to Costco to buy their big box full of Christmas gift bags and not worry about all the wrapping!

Our traditions: We'll watch "White Christmas." We'll sing the Hallelujah Chorus at church the Sunday before Christmas (Yes, it should be "For unto us..." but somehow the other tradition is the one that took hold), and once again Sabrina and I will moan that we really need to learn the alto part instead of screeching through the soprano. We'll light our Advent wreath and do our readings and say our prayers every Sunday, and Christmas Eve as well. We'll go to Christmas Eve service, maybe over to a friend's house for dinner afterward. We'll each open one present (a small one) before we go to bed Christmas Eve. Sabrina and I will bake a birthday cake for Jesus (I am fully expecting that my dedicated chef will insist that Jesus wants a New York cheesecake this year -- her new specialty). We'll sleep in on Christmas morning. I will cook everyone exactly what they want for breakfast (one year Sabrina asked for chocolate chip pancakes, chocolate milk, hot cocoa, and ice cream -- that's what she got). Then we'll open presents. Then (a new, sad tradition) we'll go to Grandma's and take her her presents. Then (not a tradition, just a prediction) we'll probably watch our kids play Guitar Hero 4 all afternoon.

As much as I hate Halloween, I love Christmas. And this year I'm so grateful to actually have a chance to participate in it.

Two weeks to go! Happy Advent and Merry Christmas!

GIFTS FROM THE HEART

Our church has a new way to help others out at Christmas this year, and I think it's just awesome.

Gifts from the Heart is a catalog of gifts to help all sorts of non-profits and ministries here in L.A. and all over the world. The idea is simple: You chose a gift to help others. You know what organization you're donating to, and what gift you're giving. Then, if you want to spread the giving further, you can give that gift in someone else's name (say, as a corporate gift at Christmastime).


So on the high end, you could give 100 people a sit-down dinner at Immanuel Food Pantry ($350), or, on the low end, you could give a Bible to Youth with a Mission in India ($2). You can focus your giving on kids (gift cards to Toys R Us, car seats, and camp scholarships), on hunger (100 lbs. of beans or a month's worth of groceries), or on international needs (a gas light, a teacher's salary, food for a leper colony). You could donate toward shelter of various kinds (a day of rehab, door knobs for Habitat for Humanity, or house cleaning supplies), toward education (sheet music for a music ministry, flash drives or even a whole class for seminary students), or toward the special needs of women who need help (kids' toys, a stroller, even diapers).

It's a great program, so simple, and really perfect for this year. I know I'm going to do just fine this Christmas loot-wise (that long-overdue new computer is coming, and Sabkina keeps making barely-veiled iPhone hints -- "It starts with an I...."). But I'd rather dispense with the random "stuff" that ends up under the tree and help someone who doesn't have all the luxuries I am blessed with. I don't need another pair of earrings or a tin of peppermint bark -- but some kid who lives closer to downtown than I do might need that backpack for school.

Gifts from the Heart is a great idea. If you want to give to the less-blessed this Christmas, please consider clicking here to make a donation.

MOVIE THOUGHTS: BOLT

We wanted to see Australia. Our kids wanted to see Bolt. We went to see Bolt. And we were glad we did.

Bolt is, as you may already know, the first movie from Disney Animation since the Pixar crew took over there. As such, it's a funny blend between the two camps. It's certainly not the finely-crafted work of art that movies like Wall-E or The Incredibles or Toy Story 2 are (with Wall-E, by the way, holding firm as my favorite film of the year so far). But it's not a piece of disposable dreck as we've seen all too often from Disney Animation (Treasure Islane, anyone?).

The influence of Pixar is evident in Bolt's solid and confident storytelling. This is a movie that knows what story it wants to tell and makes sure all its pieces work toward that goal in harmony. Even little bits just there for humor (the pigeons, for instance) come in a clean three-part structure, so that at no time do we wonder what's going on or start rolling our eyes or checking our watches.


Voice acting is good -- so often with celebrity voiceovers, I find myself paying attention to the actor rather than the character. But not once did it occur to me, "Oh, that's John Travolta," or "Oh, I'm listening to Miley Cyrus here." Animation is also well-done, though not dazzling in any way.

The movie did so many things well that it would be easy to miss the fact that it's really not about very much. The concept -- a dog who plays a superhero on TV, thinks that he actually has all those superpowers, and then learns the truth when he's thrown unexpectedly into the real world -- isn't a new one (shades of Truman Show and Galaxy Quest for starters), but it's one with incredible potential to explore questions about truth, reality, facade, and belief... Questions that just don't come up in Bolt.


This time of year, I find myself thinking in terms of grades (it's finals week next week at USC, and grading sheets are sitting in my box as I type this). How do you grade a script that is absolutely competent in every way, well done in terms of all its craft (particularly the incredibly difficult craft of story structure), and yet doesn't quite reach its potential to be so much more than it is?

I can't give Bolt an A because of that failure to live up to its potential. It's not fair to expect everyone to turn out The Incredibles.

But sometimes a good, solid B+ is just fine.

MOVIE THOUGHTS: TWILIGHT

Yes, I saw the movie. I took Sabrina over Thanksgiving weekend, so she wouldn't be the only girl at school who hadn't seen it.

Twilight almost has to be reviewed twice: Once for fans of the books, once for everyone else.

For fans of the books, it absolutely delivered. It follows the novel's (lightweight) plot faithfully, with a bit of amped-up action at the end. Edward broods and glitters. Bella broods and yearns. All the other characters are there, too -- the awkward dad, the spaced-out mom, the cluster of overly normal friends, and the stylish posers that are the vampires. But none of them matter. Only Edward and Bella matter.

Or should I say, only Edward matters. At least that was true for the row of teenage girls sitting in front of us who GIGGLED every time Edward was on screen? (One tries to remember -- was I ever that ditsy? I'm too young to have been part of Beatlemania, and really don't remember ever giggling at some movie star. It was funny to watch.)

The movie talks to its fans. The angst of the teenage world, the unimportance of parents, the repressed sexuality, the longing for the person you know you shouldn't want. It's all there, and all communicates well. To the fans, that is.


What about to the non-fans? Well, then you have a very melodramatic movie about a young girl who falls for a most inappropriate young man (well, he seems young) who, to his credit, knows he's inappropriate for her and tells her so, but -- not to his credit -- continues to encourage her love. Some good filmmaking -- the action is well handled, as is the bane of modern movies, the searching-for-information-on-the-Internet scene. A consistent moodiness which works well. And lots of yearning in place of much actual plot.

I can't imagine a lot of non-book-fans going to the movie. And the fans alone were enough to make the movie a hearty #1 its opening weekend -- though not enough to hold it at #1 over the apparently-dismal Four Christmases this weekend.

That last fact should give us pause. The movie's not a stinker, and it delivers to the fans -- so why weren't they out in force to see the movie over and over?

I think it's because Twilight is ultimately a literary phenomenon. As with Harry Potter, you just can't capture the book fully in movie form. With Harry Potter, it's the subtleties of story and character that get lost. With Twilight, it's the internalization of the sensual longing for this "perfect" young man -- sensitive and caring and gorgeous and mysterious and rich and someone your parents would disapprove of and he wants you so bad and yet he holds himself in check.

If you've read the book, you bring all that internalized angst and yearning and sensuality to the movie with you. If you haven't read the book... maybe not so much. And, if you have read the book, seeing the movie will probably just make you want to read the book again, so as to experience all that yearning again... but maybe not see the movie again.

...As for Sabrina... having not read the book, she was glad to see the movie (though she hid her eyes at the final action scene). But she sort of wondered what the big deal was, and she pronounced the movie a little too "adulty" (a new word, which I really like -- I think it has the same relationship to "adult" as truthy has to "truth").

If you loved the book, you've already seen the movie. Otherwise, you probably won't want to bother.

WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME... EXCEPT ONE

We had, for the most part, a truly lovely Thanksgiving yesterday.

We went to our friends Greg and Kathy's, whom we regularly celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve with. The food was outstanding, with everyone bringing their strongest suit to the table -- Greg's amazing smoked turkey, Kathy's artery-cloggingly-wonderful potatoes, a broccoli-cheese casserole to die for, my own stuffing (cornbread, sausage, figs, apples, cranberries and more), and a grand total of 9 desserts for 18 people, everyone of them homemade from scratch, including my own Sabrina's astonishing New York cheesecake.

The company was outstanding, with families from our church, and some folks we enjoy seeing at Greg and Kathy's (just as people have for years made friends with people they don't know at our Christmas parties, and come back year after year hoping to see them again). Our own kids (the oldest of the bunch) were very well-behaved, and all the kids in general played together well -- Barbies, Wii Sports and the like.

We also brought my mom over for Thanksgiving dinner. She's come many times before, and always had a lovely time. But this time was different. It should have been much easier, since we moved her a few months ago into a residential care facility only a few miles away from Thanksgiving dinner. But it was harder. Much harder.

Because a couple of weeks ago, my mom had a small stroke.

The damage didn't seem too bad at first. She's having a harder time hearing and processing what people say to her. She's walking a bit slower, and is afraid of falling. But clearly the damage goes deeper.

When we were about to sit down and eat, I raced over to pick up Grandma. Parked in the driveway so she didn't have far to walk, then helped her into the house and to the table. I fixed her a plate of yummies. She seemed to do okay. She wasn't participating in the conversation, but it was really going too fast for her. I guess I should have realized there was a problem when she tried to eat the napkin ring (though she is blind, and couldn't really tell what it was).

It was on the way back to her place that the depth of the problems surfaced. "Did you have a nice Thanksgiving dinner, Mom?" I asked. "Was that Thanksgiving dinner?" Uh-oh.

Then she asked "How do you know Lee?" Um... he's my husband? That was an odd question. On we drove.

When we got to her place, the caregiver came out to help her out of the car. Grandma was confused. "Have I ever been here before?" she asked. Okay, she's only been there a couple of months. And she's never been out at night from that location, and yes, she's blind. So we'll give her that.

But when we got her inside, the caregiver told her to say goodbye to Jan (i.e., me) so she could get ready for bed. And my mom said, "Jan's not here." The caregiver laughed, said of course I was here. And my mom looked straight at me and said, "You're not Jan."

I had to persuade her that yes, I was. She was very confused. She seemed to believe me. I said good night.

And back I went to Thanksgiving dinner, spent another three hours chatting and laughing and sipping. Really, a lovely evening. One of the best Thanksgivings I can remember.

Except for one little memory lapse.

Sigh.....

HAPPY THANKS GIVING

Yes, I know we're still a day or so out. But my kids are both off from school for the loooong weekend, and I've bought my figs and my cranberries and my sausage to start cooking stuffing... and that makes it Thanksgiving.


If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I stop at this time of the year not to randomly give thanks, but to go back over my "thanksgiving" list that I list out at the beginning of every month. Each month I sit down and write down 50 things I'm thankful for from that month. Sometimes it's easy and joyful. Sometimes it's really, really hard. Either way, it's a great discipline.

And now it's time for me to go through the whole year's lists and pull out 50 things, starting with this month (November) and going backwards to... well, it should be December. But I'm afraid I wasn't very thankful in December and January. So this only goes back to February. (But I'm really thankful now!!)

May you also find many things to be thankful for this year! And in 2008, for these things I have been thankful:

1. The possibility of buying [a house we ended up not getting]
2. Being able to watch the election returns (instead of going to class)
3. [A good friend] applying to the screenwriting program at USC
4. Sabrina winning the "most creative" Halloween costume award for her team costume "Reduce," "Reuse," and "Recycle."
5. The kids working hard on their school application essays
6. Sabrina getting awesome grades in geography
7. Getting good notes on our script from our writers' group
8. Lunch with a mom from school
9. Going food-shopping with Sabrina
10. Air conditioning
11. My department chair at USC assuming I know I'm doing
12. Getting perfect evaluations from one of my classes last spring
13. Cory and his friend Max's performance of their parody rendition of "Born to Run" at Family Camp
14. Being able to get the kids new uniforms for school
15. The awesome pillows at our hotel in Newport Beach
16. Cory putting on a great performance at rock star camp
17. Going to the wedding reception for some friends at church who got married in Hawaii
18. Going to the wedding of a friend from Premise
19. Sabrina hanging out with really nice girls at Family Camp
20. Our friends Nancy and Bob taking our kids overnight so we could go on a research trip
21. Starting to read Lord of the Rings to the kids
22. Lee cracking story problems on our script
23. Seeing A Chorus Line at the Music Center
24. Enough money to buy gas
25. Dinner with some new(er) friends from church
26. The Alliance of Women Directors board retreat in Oxnard
27. Cory switching his focus from drumming to being a lead singer
28. New shoes
29. Lee working hard on our new script
30. How cool (and hot!) Cory looks in his new hats
31. Planning the Alliance of Women Directors board retreat
32. The end of the school year
33. The spec script market heating up
34. Iron Man
35. Having lunch with Wendi, one of my best friends from junior high/high school
36. Friends praying for us
37. The Bel Air Pres comedy concert
38. Sleep
39. My computer
40. Being invited to an Easter brunch at the Hollywood Bowl
41. Lee helping me with a project I just couldn't get right
42. Our friend Rene letting Cory P.A. on his short film
43. Feeling peaceful even in straitened circumstances
44. The possibility of VA benefits for my mom
45. Finishing our last ever Girl Scout cookie sale
46. My students bring in birthday cupcakes for my birthday
47. Behind-the-scenes strike news on deadlinehollywooddaily.com
48. Being asked to join the Writers Guild Spiritual Outreach Committee
49. Cory's fine performance in The Government Inspector at school
50. Watching American Idol with the whole family.


Okay, lots of little things in there, a few big ones... But all of them, I am very grateful for (and 450 more for the year as well!)

Wishing you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

BADD VIDEOS

I was thrilled recently to realize that Bel Air Presbyterian's Drama Department's videos are being posted on YouTube. We are continually amazed at how good (and how funny) they are.

I had wanted to post a link to this last Sunday's -- a "negative campaign ad" for Joshua, which had us howling. But it's not up yet. So here's one of our golden oldies. (My antique computer -- about to be replaced -- isn't so hot at embedding videos.)

And if you click over to YouTube and type in "belairdrama," you'll find a whole selection. Every one worth clicking on!

Enjoy!

LESSONS FROM THE AMAZING RACE

You know, we could just have a standing "Lesson from The Amazing Race" this season, and it would be: "Read the frigging instructions!"

Once again, we have clue-reading problems. With our teams now in Kazakhstan, Ken and Tina follow the detour clue to a point. They have to dress in a cow costume, make their way through the streets to a milk stand and drink a glass of milk. (This made for fun TV, especially when mother-and-son team Toni and Dallas congaed their way through the streets -- but is it really indicative of the culture of Kazakhstan? Really?)

Ken and Tina make it to the milk stand, drink the milk... and leave, not realizing their next clue was on the bottom of the milk glass. They manage to figure out their mistake and go back for their clue... but they then decide they really should return to where they started to return their cow costume. This they do, even though the clue says nothing of the sort. And even though Toni and Dallas point out to them that they'll need their cow head later in the game. Oy.


More bad clue reading from the Frat Boys, who are shedding on all fraternities an aura of stupidity. They (stupidly) leave their shoes behind at the cow costume stop (the costume comes with boots), assuming they'll be able to go back for them later. They manage to drink the milk and read the clue -- and are so excited that they're heading for the Pit Stop (i.e., the stopping point for that leg of the race), that they bail on their shoes and grab a taxi. Oops. The clue says, as so many of the Race clues do: "Make your way on foot..." So when they reach the Pit Stop, back they have to go to do the whole thing over... on foot. Darn. Too bad they don't have with them, oh I don't know, some shoes!

Either of these could be our lessons for the episode. But let's take "Read the instructions" as a meta-lesson for the whole show and focus instead on this week's loser team: Terence and Sarah.

Terence and Sarah decide to go for the Fast Forward -- a twice-only in the course of the show clue that allows them to jump to the head of the pack. However, the Fast Forward warns that they're going to be eating Kazahki delicacies. Presumably the contestants have all watched the show before, and know that this is usually an invitation to throw up. The food in question is likely to be obnoxious (to western appetites) -- for instance, the time contestants had to eat still-living-and-wriggling octopi in Japan. Or it's likely to be massive in amount -- as witness the time contestants had to eat a pound of caviar in Russia, or five pounds of meat in Argentina.

Oh, and notice something else that tends to pop up in the eating challenges: Meat, of one kind or another. Sure enough, when they arrive at the Fast Forward, what do they have to eat but fat from a sheep's butt. Yum. (Nick and Starr, also there to vie for the Fast Forward, wisely avoid asking or reading what it is they're actually eating.)

A tough enough task for a carnivore. But, as it turns out, Terence is a vegetarian. Did it never occur to him that an eating challenge would probably be a bad idea for someone who isn't an omnivore? Is his world so small that he assumes all cultures make a space for vegetarians?

I don't know if it's too his credit or not that he actually tries to complete the challenge. I sort of think he should have stuck with his principles and refused to eat the meat. (I remember the time the nice young couple hit a Fast Forward that involved having your head shaved -- and the guy refused to let his girlfriend shave her hair -- they were both models, I believe.)

Terence, however, tosses his 18-year moral stance to the winds and tries to gobble the sheep's butt. He can't do it. Gagging ensues, and he and Sarah have to leave the Fast Forward and try to catch up with the rest of the contestants.

They're too far behind, of course. Even with the stupidity of the Frat Boys and all the instruction-reading-failures mentioned above... Terence and Sarah are the last team to arrive and are out of the Race.

Thus leading us to this week's lesson: Know Your Limitations.

MOVIE THOUGHTS: HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR

HSM3 is a movie you're supposed to hate, right?

I mean, there's the whole Disney-corporate-merchandising angle: It's not a movie, it's a chance to sell stuff. Or there's the relevance angle: High school kids' lives are about angst and drugs and sex and pregnancy and peer pressure, not about singing and dancing and where to go to college and chaste teen romance. Or there just the "I'm too self-consciously hip for the room" angle: In an ironic age, how can anyone actually like something so unabashedly eager to please? Or the didactic angle: A movie like this should have a message!

I don't really care. Because I loved High School Musical 3.

If you've seen the first two on TV, you pretty much know where this is going. Troy and Gabriela, devoted to each other and to minimal amounts of closed-mouth kissing, will have pressure on their relationship (this time caused by the fact that she's gotten into Stanford -- oh the hardship! -- and will be a thousand miles away). Sharpay will try to undermine Troy and Gabriela, will try to get Ryan to help her, and will fail. Troy will be torn between basketball and singing-and-dancing. And there will be a musical.

(And if you haven't seen the first two -- we took a friend who hadn't, and she had no problem figuring it out.)


Craft remains very high, with great work from Kenny Ortega (choreographing and directing), as well as the myriad of songwriters putting together the near-continuous musical numbers. Zac Efron does a fine job as Troy -- but he almost doesn't have to, he's so gorgeous to look at. (Screams from the audience on the opening shot -- a huge close-up of Troy -- and I have to say, well-deserved screams.) I've never been a Vanessa Hudgens fan, but she annoyed me less than in the first two movies. I would have liked to have seen more of the supporting characters -- Sharpay and Ryan in particular -- but this is Troy and Gabriela's movie.

I thought the story hung together better in HSM2, actually, where all the action was focused on the big show, and where the time frame was condensed into summer vacation. But the big numbers, full of exuberance and charm and sincerity and not a whit of winking at the audience, all work like gangbusters here. The opening basketball number is terrific, the Troy-and Gabriela- waltz number was just lovely, and the "Boys Are Back" number, with Zac Efron and Corbin Bleu dancing their way through a junkyard, is a show-stopper.

Maybe the time is just right for a movie like this. America made it through the Depression with the help of Busby Berkeley and the like, and a peppy, well-done, uplifting musical feels very timely indeed right now.

Here's the bottom line: I was in a grumpy, anxious mood when I walked into the movie. I started smiling two minutes in. I smiled continuously throughout the movie, laughed, even leaked a tear or two. And I was laughing and smiling when I came out. Not many movies you can say that about.

A couple of days later, when we had our weekly family meeting and talked about our "highs" and "lows" for the week, every single one of us picked HSM3 as our "high." And Cory even posted a thread on his Facebook page that said something like "I saw HSM3 and I'm not ashamed to admit I liked it."

Maybe that's the message of the movie: It's okay to openly like something that makes you smile this much.

High School Musical 3-- an antidote to the evening news. Go see it and smile!

LESSONS FROM THE AMAZING RACE

I haven't been consistent about posting on this season's Amazing Race, because I've watched so many on Tivo, getting caught up, etc. But this week's was a doozy. (As well, the episode confirmed for me that I really do not want to visit India. Sorry, Jean!!)

Snarky, even bitchy, divorcees Kelly and Christy will probably not ever want to watch this episode, in which they're front and center. Rarely has anyone been so clueless, so blatantly dumb in pursuing the Race.

They were in good position when they hit the Roadblock. The task? One of them had to dash through a sort of plaza where Indian locals were throwing paint (for fun? a holy day? I don't remember). They had to climb a ladder to what looked like one of those old-fashioned revolving clotheslines, on which were pinned dozens of envelopes. Most of the envelopes said "Try again," but a few said "The Amazing Race" and contained the next clue. All the envelopes were printed in big bold letters.

Kelly (I think -- they're sort of clones of each other) races out to get the clue. She's pelted with paint. She runs up the ladder. Doesn't bother to read those big, bold letters. Just pulls an envelope at random and runs back. It's empty.


You'd think that at this point, she'd figure out, gee, maybe I should look at the envelopes before I pull one off. But no. Back she goes. More paint. She's quite multi-colored by now. She pulls another envelope at random. And again, it's empty.

By now, other contestants are here. Perhaps she'll look and see what they're doing, why it's so easy for them. But no. Even though right in front of her other contestants are thumbing through the clearly-marked envelopes, Kelly runs out yet again (more paint), and yanks off another randon envelope. Surprise, surprise: It's empty. And for good measure, she falls in a puddle of paint. It'd be easier to feel sorry for her if she weren't so stupid.

She finally gets the idea of the task, but only after being passed by several other teams. Uh-oh.

On we go until we get to the Detour. Kelly and Christy at least choose the easier one -- "Bleary-Eyed," in which they have to follow a trail of tiny numbers hanging from power wires hanging over the street, then hand the list of numbers to a guy waiting at the end. But maybe it's just the easier choice for those contestants who actually read the directions. While other teams race through the task, Kelly and Christy start writing down random numbers off random signs all over the busy street. Of course they're wrong.

Back they go to the beginning. They do the same thing. And now they're joined by Ken and Tina, last week's "last couple to arrive." Kelly and Christy go out of their way to refuse to work with Ken and Tina, even to hide their list of numbers to keep Tina from copying. But this list is, of course, wrong, too.

Ken and Tina understand the task, complete it smoothly, and head for the pit stop -- having moved from last (6th) place up to 4th, thanks to the stupidity of other teams. Good job keeping those wrong answers secret, Kelly and Christy!

Eventually they figure out what numbers to look for -- and even then they have to have help from the Frat Boys (the last people one would ask for help in this particular incarnation of the Race). Oy.

So we were glad to see the Divorcees go. And the lesson learned from this episode:

The race may not always be to the swift, but it is never to the stupid.

TIME CHANGES

It usually takes about a week for me to adjust to the biannual time changes, and of course the change to Standard Time ("fall back" is always easier because we get that extra hour. Yesterday I woke up on my own before the alarm, glanced at the level of light coming in the window, and thought, "Oh, it's 6:00." And sure enough, it was 5 after 6. I had made the adjustment.

I remember changing the clocks when I was a kid. It was a huge deal at our house for some reason. I would call the "time lady" on the phone (853-1212) and yell out the time to my dad as he rushed around the house resetting every clock... and it seemed as if we had dozens of clocks. Quite the ceremony... (Now, of course, it's easier. The Tivo resets itself. The computers, the phones all reset themselves. Just the microwave and the alarm clocks to deal with.)


...Some people make lists of things they want to do before they die. There's almost a sub-genre of books and movies to that effect now ("The Bucket List," etc.). As list-driven as I am, I've never felt the need to make such a list. I do have three things I've wanted to do since childhood: (1) Experience the eye of a hurricane; (2) Fly faster than the speed of sound; (3) Experience weightlessness/zero gravity. But three items, for some as list-driven as me, does not a list make. And those are all so unlikely that I really think it would be foolish to pursue them.

No, instead I'm starting a list of things I don't want to do before I die. Eat a bug, for instance. Or change a flat tire. Or visit India... Think I could get a book deal off a list like that?

Last week, however, I thought of yet another list: Things I will never get to do before I die. Because when I was a kid, yelling out times as my dad set the clocks, I always wondered what happened to the "time lady" if you called just as the time was resetting at 2:00 a.m. Did you hear "At the tone, the time will be 1:59 and 50 seconds -- beep!... At the tone, the time will be 1:00 exactly -- beep!"? I really wanted to know. I thought about how, when I was grown up, someday I'd sit up till 2:00 a.m. and listen. But I never did.

And now the time lady's gone. You can't call for the time anymore. And I'll never get to find out.... It's also extraordinarily unlikely that I'll ever fly faster than the speed of sound, either, given the death of the Concorde.

It makes me wonder... What other things will I never get to do?

THE BOOKS OF THE THIRD QUARTER

Yes, I know we're waaay past the third quarter. But I've been writing more than reading, and just haven't gotten to this post. I did get a few things read, about half on my Madeleine L'Engle list, about half on my massive-and-ever-growing "to read" list.

Here we go! In alpha order (is there any other) by author, and with my faves linked to their amazon pages.

Most Likely to Succeed at Work: How to Get Ahead at Work Using Everything You Learned in High School by Wilma Davidson and Jack Dougherty.
When I was in 9th grade, I had to make a "sociogram" of my school for my Anthropology class. Basically, we had to determine all the social groups of the school (the jocks, the geeks, etc.) and how they were related. I teamed up with my friends Diane and Kathy. Our sociogram was unique in that we were the only ones in the class to point out the Jewish kids of the school as a unique group (one that almost completely overlapped the student government group). People would have been offended, except that it was so clear we'd noticed something very accurate... Anyway, that's probably why I was attracted to this book. It's basically a sociogram overlaying high school categories onto the workplace. A cute idea. But not much more than that.

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mirielle Guilano.
A somewhat fun read, though it took a lot of padding to get this idea up to book-length. The bottom line: Use fresh, good ingredients, don't eat crap (processed food, fast food, etc.), walk a lot, treasure your moments with chocolate, and drink wine every day.

Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson.
I already blogged about how much I enjoyed this book here. I stand by my opinion.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs.
As soon as I started to read this book, which is about a journalist's self-imposed task of reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica in a year, I got jealous. "I could have done that," I told Lee. "But you didn't have the idea," he replied. "But I could have," I said. "But you didn't," he said. Well, yeah. And besides, if I had set out on a quest to read the entire EB, I would have just blogged about it and then had lots of people saying, "Gee, too bad you wasted this on a blog when you could have had a book deal." And they would have been right. Sigh.... Be that as it may, I loved this book. Well-written, fun to read (perfect bathroom reading, though that's not how I used it), and full of fascinating if not always useful facts. What's not to love about a book that essentially consists of a giant list in alphabetical order. (I can't tell you how much I love alpha order... When I'm in a city where the streets are in alpha order, I just have to smile. Okay, TMI.) A very, very fun book. Highly recommended.

A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle.
This is one of L'Engle's earliest personal/devotional/non-fiction books, and I have to say it's not one of her strongest. She's a little too wrapped up in herself and her own emotions and reactions to things, and her theology is still, to be kind, in its formative stages. I'd skip it.

The Irrational Season by Madeleine L'Engle.
I came very close to linking this book, but didn't feel quite strongly enough about it in the end to do so. L'Engle walks us through the church calendar, from Advent around the months and back to Advent again. Some of the chapters are lovely and inspiring and provocative, others less so. She includes lots of personal anecdotes, but somehow they don't seem so self-centered as in "A Circle of Quiet," and her theology is finally on track. Some very lovely poetry as well, which was a delightful treat. I'd recommend getting this book and reading it over the course of a year, holiday/feast by holiday/feast.

The Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L'Engle.
This was an oddly apt book for me to read, as my mother is weakening fast (she is currently in the hospital for tests after what appears to my untrained eye to have been a mini-stroke of some kind, and is spending her days yelling at people because she doesn't realize where she is, and pulling out all her IVs and her heart monitor). L'Engle's book, which is half about how she took care of her mother during her last summer alive, really hit home in so many ways... at least in that half. The other half was about L'Engle's childhood, which, frankly, I skimmed.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.
Yes, pursuant to many of your suggestions, I read it. And I do not recommend it. Not for pre-pubescent girls, and really not for anyone. Not because of the vampires -- I have no problems with the vampire side of the story at all, and actually think Meyer's done some interesting things there. But because it's the story of a teenage girl who falls in love with a man (not a boy), and who chooses to give up everything in her life that matters for that man. Not the role model I want for my daughter, or really for any girl. The writing is sappy to the extreme and, though everyone remains chaste (sexually and vampirely), it's quite hyper-sexualized in the writing. Pass. (Now I just have to figure out how to deal with Sabrina's desire to see the movie...)

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.
I did something I rarely do, given the huge "to-read" list I already have. I picked this up at a bookstore because I liked the cover. It's a kids' book about four kids who team up to defeat a criminal mastermind's schemes to take over the world. While intensely clever, I found the book a little cold, and never really believed the world it was set in. But Sabrina loved it and immediately checked out the sequel. So what do I know?

...So that's all I managed to read this quarter (ahem... quarter and a third). I do find it hard to read much when I'm heavily writing, so hopefully I'll get more reading done before the end of the year (almost guaranteed, because we have Christmas books and Christmas vacation coming... where I firmly expect to find "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" under the tree -- that's not a hint, it's a prediction).

Let me know if you've read any of these!

VOTE AND LET'S GET IT OVER WITH

Are you as sick of this election as I am?

And we've had it easy in California, where we really don't get the big onslaught of attack ads (though our neverending propositions make up for it).

It is astonishing to me how, despite the fact that we have two decent and honorable men running for President, the level of nastiness has gotten so high. And, to my mind, so shameful.

You could see the progression of the nastiness and polarization by a couple of comments our senior pastor, Mark Brewer, made. Many months ago, around the time the nominations were sewn up (June or so), he said from the pulpit that people had been pressuring him to make a political statement. His statement? He said he thought either McCain or Obama would be a good President. The response? People seemed to shrug and say, yeah, okay. And we moved on.

Mark made the same comment again a week ago, again due to pressure from people demanding he make a political statement. But this time he framed it by saying "You know how to stop a dinner party dead in its tracks? Just tell 'em you think either guy would be a fine President." And this time he got a huge reaction -- lots of murmuring from people who did not agree, and everyone seeming to agree that, yes, this would certainly stop any conversation dead in its tracks.

How did we get so very polarized so fast, in the short time between his two repetitions of the same comment? And why? What good does it do the country to draw these battle lines?

Because I have a foot in so very many worlds, I get emails from moderates and extremists on both sides. And I'm pretty sick of them (with some folks, I see their name on the email and just hit delete because I know how nasty it's going to be). I'm sick of the preposterous conspiracy-theory rumor-slinging garbage coming from both sides. (Sarah Palin's baby really isn't hers, it was her daughter Bristol's first baby and Sarah just pretended to be pregnant! William Ayers really wrote Obama's autobiographies and is writing speeches for him today!) It's all trash. Aren't we supposed to be better that this?

The election will be over tonight. And all I really hope for from the next President is that he do everything possible to get rid of the nastiness and polarization, that he do what he can to marginalize the people within his own party who stake out the battle lines with such vehemence. In many ways, I think the polarization is by far the greatest internal threat to the U.S...

Because "A house divided against itself cannot stand." It was true when Lincoln said it. It was true when Jesus said it. And if we don't listen, if we allow ourselves to be divided red vs. blue (or whatever), then we know the consequences.

So go vote today. Be happy or disappointed. And then let's all get over it. Or we, as a country, will not stand.

A HAPPY HALLOWEEN AFTER ALL

Just a quick postscript to my Halloween post to say....

Sabrina-and-friends' costume ("Reduce, Reuse, Recycle") won their school's big costume award ("Most Creative")! (Sorry I can't post a picture -- the cable linking my camera to my computer seems to be broken.)

From the beginning of Kindergarten, this is the award that counts. Who cares about winning the year's Science Medal (which Sabrina has won), or the Elizabeth Van Somebody-or-Other Courtesy Award (which we are never going to be in the running for)? Every kid in school only cares about winning a costume award at Halloween. But with 280+ kids and only about 10 awards per year, the odds are long.

The stakes grew higher for Sabrina a couple of years ago when Cory won for his "Partly-cloudy-chance-of-rain" costume (cotton balls stuck on a blue shirt, and a liberally-used squirt bottle full of water). Not that she's competitive or anything.

But now she has won as well (although Cory keeps trying to make a case that because she was 1 of 3 in a group costume, she only won 1/3 of the award). Forget about the rest of the school year. We can graduate happy now.

And I can heave a sigh of relief knowing that all the Halloween pressure now begins to dissipate as we move upward to middle school and high school.

It's all downhill from here!

HAPPY (EASY!) HALLOWEEN

I have spent so much time grouching over Halloween every year -- witness previous posts here and here -- that my kids sometimes call me the Halloween Grinch. I just don't like how evil Halloween's gotten. I don't like the ridiculous expense on horrible props, or the difficulty and personal trauma involved in coming up with costumes that aren't (a) evil, (b) slutty, or (c) lame, and that is acceptable to both my kids and me.

But suddenly, this year Halloween became easy.

Sabrina joined up with two other girls to do a group costume. The three of them are all decked out as "Reduce," "Reuse," and "Recycle." They're wearing Whole Foods canvas shopping bags torn up and repurposed as skirts, tops made out of plastic grocery bags, and jewelry made from bottle caps and poptops and the like. Really cute, incredibly cheap, and they did all the work themselves. (When Sabrina's skirt didn't fit right, on her own she snipped off the edge of it and used the fabric to put in belt loops, and also cut a buttonhole and added a button. Let me tell you, she's stylin'!)

As for Cory, he was even simpler. He asked me to pick up a bag of Smarties candy at the store. He's wearing a geeky t-shirt, and has Smarties taped all over his jeans, and he's going as ... "Smartie Pants."

And again, he did it all himself. What's not to love. (An even better costume, I thought: One of Cory's friends from church is wearing an Obama shirt with coins glued all over it and going as... "Change you can believe in.")

Tonight Lee takes Sabrina to join her two compatriots ("Reduce" and "Recycle") for what could very well be her last trick-or-treating house-to-house. I'll take Cory to the home of a friend from church, where a few kids are meeting to go to some haunted house (because they're far too mature to trick-or-treat). I'll hang out at a Starbucks with my computer.

And then Halloween will be over. The easiest one ever. Whew!

May your own Halloween be fun, non-evil (and non-slutty), and as easy as this.

FADE TO BLACK

There are few words more designed to bring delight to the heart of a screenwriter than "Fade to Black"... the usual last line of a screenplay.

We got to write those words Monday night, to my exhausted relief.

This was one of the fastest projects we've ever written -- 10 weeks, start to finish (and we were on vacation for one of those weeks, plus had to deal with the beginning of the school year and moving my mom and all the other real life things that one is tempted to view as time-suckers in the face of a fast-approaching deadline). We were also working in physically daunting circumstances. And we were caught in the middle of the DreamWorks/Paramount divorce, adding a little political fillip to the whole thing.


But we did it. We collaborated in a mode we'd never used before, one that required us to trust each other's handling of the story and of our screenwriting craft a lot more than usual. And somehow it worked.

Those who have read it so far (hey, it's been less than 48 hours) are raving. That's always nice. Raves often lead to further drafts of a screenplay, which leads to more money, which, in this economy, is quite the lovely miracle indeed.

And now I can sit back and try to remember what it's like to get through the day without feeling guilty that I'm not writing. Without the back of my mind wandering off to think through just how to best replot that final action sequence. Without telling the kids that no, I can't look at that YouTube video, I can't practice volleyball moves, I can't cook dinner because I have to write.

I can answer e-mail, and go through several weeks of unopened mail, and go to a movie, and do my hand laundry, and work on the kids' school applications, and read my students' work at a more leisurely pace, and finally make that Costco run, and get a pedicure, and wonder what the back of my mind should think about now...

Oh, and I can blog.

A happy day, indeed.

FIRE SEASON

People say we don't have seasons here in Southern California, I guess because we don't have snow. But we do have seasons. They're just not the same seasons as everyone else.

I woke up around 3:00 a.m. to the sound of sirens. Fire trucks on the freeway. (We can hear the freeway loud and clear if the wind's blowing the right way.) I could tell they were fire trucks by the multiple, overlapping sirens. And I could tell they were in a hurry because not only were the sirens going, but they were honking their distinctive horns repeatedly.


"Fire," I mumbled to myself. But the sirens didn't stop -- that's the bad sign, when you hear them stop. So I muttered a prayer for the firefighters and rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. It was hard, because the sirens kept coming. More and more fire trucks. A big fire. Somehow I dozed off.

Until 5:42 a.m., when every phone we have started to ring all at once. It was a robocall from Cory's school, announcing there would be no school today because of the fire in the Sepulveda Pass. (And when I logged on, I found I had an e-mail, also sent at 5:42. Very impressive.)

The Sepulveda Pass? We live less than a mile away from the Sepulveda Pass. That didn't sound good. Even though we didn't smell any smoke.

We flipped on the local news, something we never do. Yup. Fire in the Sepulveda Pass. 150 acres and still burning. Burning straight up the mountain from the freeway to a mountaintop housing development. The freeway was closed, and the parallel road, Sepulveda Blvd., was also closed. And the firefighters were actually doing nighttime water drops by helicopter, something they never do, because it's so very, very dangerous.

But they had no choice. Yes, the Pass is full of brush and wilderness, but it's bordered on all sides by homes -- mostly rather expensive homes. If a fire got loose in the Sepulveda Pass, the losses would be inestimable. It's just one of the oddities of Los Angeles, the only major city in the U.S. with a mountain range running right through the middle of it. Crowded as we are, we live surrounded by patches of wilderness. And wilderness burns.

They stopped the fire. They opened the freeway by 7:00 (otherwise literally millions of people wouldn't have gotten to work). But they never did open Sepulveda, as the now-contained fire kept smouldering and threatening to reignite all day. If we'd had to get Cory to and from school, it would probably have taken an hour to an hour and a half each way.

I guess that's part of what it means to live in L.A. Other places, kids get 'snow days' from school. Here, we get 'fire days.' And while the rest of the country is celebrating autumn, watching the turning of the leaves (something I've never really seen), here we're sniffing the air for smoke. Because we don't really have autumn here. We have fire season.

BACK IN A MO

I'm finishing and delivering a script this week, so posting may be slight. (But it's always a happy day when we get to write "The End," so I don't mind!)


I do have to post about the last two weeks of The Amazing Race (so sad the comic book geeks are gone!), and about the books of the third quarter, and more. And maybe I'll need a break while finishing, so don't count me out for the week! But at the moment I needs must dive back into the world of military working dogs and head back to Brazil, so off I go!

See you soon!

MOVIE THOUGHTS: BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA

Yes, I joined the millions and millions of people who ignored the well-reviewed, more serious and relevant Body of Lies (directed by Academy-award winner Ridley Scott and starring Academy-award winner Russell Crowe and Academy-award nominee Leonardo di Caprio) to instead go see a fairly ludicrous story of chihuahuas lost in Mexico.

And I bet I had more fun.

Just to clear my name with any eye-rollers out there... we did a movie party for my daughter's 12th birthday, and it was either BH Chihuahua, City of Ember (which got lousy reviews and tanked in its opening weekend), or wait two weeks for High School Musical 3 (which all the girls want to see but won't admit to because they feel they're "too old" for a high school movie. Oy.).


It's not surprising, actually, that such a piece of froth should do so well as the country tanks into (we hope only) a recession. Think what Busby Berkeley movies meant to the audience during the Great Depression: Two hours of forget-your-troubles fun, a little romance, a little glamour. I think BH Chihuahua catches the Zeitgeist at just the right time: Who wants to see doom and gloom, tension and drama, when we've got it smashing toward us from every angle every night on the news? Nope. We want froth. So on to the movie itself...

BH Chihuahua was absolutely ludicrous. The basic story: An overly pampered chihuahua taken on a party weekend to Baja California is kidnapped and thrown into the dog fights. She gets away with the help of a washed-up police dog, but the bad guys suddenly realize they'd really like the diamond choker the chihuaha is wearing. (Why didn't they take the choker off her the second they kidnapped her? This is the giant and quite stupid PLOT HOLE I'm sure I will point out in my screenwriting classes for years.)

Somehow the chihuahua ends up in Mexico City and has to get back to Beverly Hills with the help of the police dog, and (oh, here's more plotting that you're gonna love) the lovestruck chihuahua of the gardener back home, who has come all the way to Mexico City to search for the lost dog... and with a nasty Doberman owned by the bad guy on their tales. Along the way, they run across other dogs, including a giant Chihuahua kingdom that looks like the bad theme-park version of an Indiana Jones set. Amazingly (sarcasm), the Chihuahuas make it back to Beverly Hills, just in time to start working on the sequel.


As I said, the movie is rather dumb. But somehow, it's just fun. It's funny enough, has enough cute dog moments, and a winsome attitude that blithely dances forward without even acknowledging the monstrous plot holes and continuity gaps.
One of those movies you expect to hate, but come away saying, "You know, that wasn't so bad." (Think Alvin and the Chipmunks but with dogs.)

Maybe I just had fun because my expectations were so low. (Although I was disappointed that they didn't license the obvious music choice -- Weezer's "Beverly Hills" ("that's where I wanna be... living in Beverly Hills").) Or maybe I had fun because I was surrounded by giggling 11- and 12-year-old girls all hopped up on Raisinettes and Bunch'o'Crunch.

But I admit it. I did have fun. However, please do not take this as a recommendation of the movie. Unless you can take a posse of tween-age girls with you.

On a side note: It was interesting to see what trailers got a response in this sold-out theatre. The new Madagascar 2 trailer was much funnier than the earlier "Move it-move it" teaser trailer, but didn't fully convince my girls. Everyone liked the upcoming Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler. Marley and Me fell completely flat -- no response whatsoever from the huge theatre. (I'm guessing no one in the theatre was old enough to recognize the Chariots of Fire gag used in the trailer.)

But the biggest response? High School Musical 3. Squeals of delight, people throwing their hands up in the air when the trailer started. And people all over the place singing along with the song.

Even my girls were singing along. Not that they'd ever admit it when the lights came up. But I guarantee they'll all sneak out to the movie.

If you only have one ticket to buy to a tween-happy movie, I'd wait for HSM3. Don't worry, BH Chihuahua 2 will be along soon enough.

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, AND I FEEL FINE

The financial meltdown of the past week has certainly rocked a lot of folks.

I mix and mingle and e-mail with a really wide variety of people. Well-off stay-at-home moms who haven't worked for pay since the birth of their first child. Students living on student loans and wondering how (if) they'll ever pay them off. Industry types who are guaranteed large chunks of change on every project, whether they had much to do with it or not. Industry types who desperately hope that today will bring a returned phone call from an agent, a residual check in the mail. Working stiffs whose retirement plans have just been wiped out. Freelancers moving from job to job and hoping that one of the temp gigs will turn into something real. And way, way too many people with absolutely no health insurance, hoping that the next handshake won't be the one carrying the germs that send them to the ER.

And among all these groups, the financial meltdown is the number one topic of conversation. People are freaked who have no need to freak. (For instance, the woman living in the $6 million house and driving the Escalade who moaned, "I lost a million dollars on Monday!" even though her husband still brings in an 8 figure income.)

Right behind the financial meltdown conversation, though, and underlying it, is a deeper fear. The fear that maybe this time the uncertainty won't go away. What if I lose my job? Can I get another one? How long can I survive? What do I do when my unemployment runs out? Can I get health insurance? What if I get sick without health insurance? What if I lose my house (which is already worth less than my mortgage)? What if I can't pay for my school, my kids' school? How do I pay for the gas to go to work? Or to look for a new job? How am I supposed to plan for the future? How I am supposed to plan for next month?

The fear washes from people in conversations, in e-mails, in casual comments from strangers standing in the checkout line.

And I've been surprised that it's been washing right past me.

I'm not meaning to be callous. Truly I'm not. And I don't mean for this to be any kind of a rant at all. Because I know all those fears. I know them very well. Because what everyone else seems to be going through is standard operating procedure for most of us in the entertainment industry.

Job security? Ha! We move from project to project, hired and fired at the whim of an employer who doesn't have to answer to anyone. Yes, we get paid well when we work, but it can be months (or years) between paychecks. Health insurance? Sure, when we have it, it's gold standard insurance just this side of the U.S. Senate's... when we have it. Because those months or years without work mean lapses of insurance, too.

All the stop-gap measures people are talking about for the first time -- Maybe we should drive the car another year. Maybe we should have a "staycation" this year -- We've been doing them for years.

That's because those of us in the biz know something that so many others are just figuring out: A weekly/biweekly/monthly paycheck is an illusion.


There is no security in an employer, in a steady job. In fact, the very phenomenon of a weekly paycheck really dates back only 150 years or so in history, back to the Industrial Revolution. Before that (and for most of the world still today), the majority of people lived by the vicissitudes of nature or of the marketplace: If your crops failed, you could starve. If no one bought your goods, you had no income. You think you can plan for 10 years from now based on your paycheck? Well, good luck. But those of us in the biz already know how it feels when those plans become futile because things didn't work out the way you thought they would.

People who are used to a paycheck simply don't know what it means to live without one. I remember sitting in deacons' meetings discussing whether to help someone who was down on their luck, and hearing the folks with "normal" jobs descry the helpee's inability to set a budget, to keep up with their bills. "Don't you understand," I'd try to explain, "they don't know how much money they have coming in next month?" But the paycheck-people never did understand. Instead they most often muttered something about how people should go get a "real" job.

Living without a safety net is status quo for most of the world. In the U.S., however, we seem to feel we are entitled otherwise. But working in the industry, I always know: Work is a blessing. Work is a gift from God. While I am fully qualified for every job I've gotten, I can't say I am entitled to them, can't say I necessarily deserve them over everyone else who may have wanted the gig more, may have needed it more. I know that I can do everything right, that I can indeed sometimes be the perfect person for a job... and still not get it. I know it's possible to do everything right, and still suffer grievous losses. I know to "put not my trust in princes, in whom there is no help."

Who knows if the current financial meltdown is a temporary aberration or the beginning of the next Great Depression? I sure don't. But I know I've been through it before, over and over again. And maybe even some of those bad times were a blessing too, as I'm able to look at the news that's driving others panicky and to, well... shrug.

Welcome to my world.

THE SCRIBBLER'S GUIDE TO THE LAND OF MYTH

I know it seems as if all I'm posting lately is shoutouts to other people's work. But I can't help it, I'm just so proud of what my friends are doing. (And I have some more substantive posts coming -- I have to do the books of the 3rd quarter, and I'm thinking through why this financial crisis seems irrelevant...)

But in the meantime, let me give a great pitch for my friend Sarah's new book, The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth: Mythic Motifs for Storytellers.

Sarah, who's a member of our writers group, has been working on this book for years. She's a former researcher for Jeopardy, so you know the research is excellent, and her thinking through issues of myth from a storyteller's perspective is terrific.

So often as writers we take a courtesy look at the hero myth/hero's journey and let it go at that. But Sarah has gone much much deeper into the "land of myth," and provides plenty of useful tooks for writers in a clear "travel guide" format.

Put this in your reading queue!

LESSONS FROM THE AMAZING RACE

Another great week on the Race. I'm still not quite tracking with the names of the contestants, just their descriptions (Southern belles, frat boys, etc.). But we have quite a good set of 'characters.' Someone to hate (the self-aggrandizing Tina), someone to root for (the comic book geeks), someone to laugh at (the Southern belles).

And, as always, we can learn a great lesson from The Amazing Race. This week's lesson: Follow the directions.

Lots of teams messed themselves up by failing to do so. Terence and Sarah, who were first after the Detour of rolling the boat into the water on big logs, didn't follow the directions about finding a taxi, and ran into town futilely so as to avoid climbing the path to the top of the cliff where all the taxis were waiting. They avoided elimination only because another team was kind enough to stop and tell them where the taxis were... far from where they were. Oops. Nothing like dropping from first to almost last because you don't bother to follow instructions.

In an astonishing display of, well, stupidity, the two divorcees (don't remember names) confused the two parts of the detour clue. The second choice in the detour involved looking for a shipping container in a port. Somehow these two decided what they really had to do was dig in the sand for said "container," even though all around them, other teams were racing off to get the taxis that their instructions told them to get. Really one of the dumber mistakes I've seen a team make in a while, though fortunately for them not as fatal as it could have been.

The divorcees proved themselves unworthy later when their instructions specifically told them to keep their taxi while they performed the Roadblock... but let their taxi go. Read the instructions, girls! ...I'd say this team is not long for the Race.

But the Race itself continues in high form in Brazil. I can't wait for next week's episode. (Which, unfortunately, I will have to Tivo... so here's hoping our Tivo, currently out of whack due to neighborhood-wide technical problems, will be restored in time!)

And in the meantime, I will spend my week reading all directions very very carefully.

THE DEATHLY HALLOWS LECTURES

I have been remiss in not promoting John Granger's most recent book The Deathly Hallows Lectures.

John has led the way in discussing Harry Potter as a work of literature falling within the mainstream of the history of Western literature, in providing the serious reader tools for digging deeper into the story, and, of course, in pointing out the Christian foundations of the story.

I have personally been on a longer "Harry Potter vacation" than I expected, but I'm planning to sit down with the series at the beginning of 2009. John's book is just the thing to get me ready for diving back in to the world of Hogwarts.

Chances are you already have his book... but if not, you can get it here. Enjoy!

CONGRATS TO BADD!

My kids are not entirely thrilled about the fact that they now go to "big church" every week as well as their own age-appropriate worship/teaching time. But one thing always gets them sitting up straight and excited to see what comes next: A video from, or live performance by, our church's drama group: BADD (which stands for Bel Air Drama Department).

They're good. They're really, really good. Every year, when they hold auditions, I sort of think of trying out... but then I get nervous that I'm just not good enough a writer for them and chicken out. (And yes, they hold auditions, which I think is awesome in the church world where wanting to do something is so often seen as being equivalent to being gifted to do something. To quote C.S. Lewis: "A choir should sing in tune, or it should not sing at all.")

Anyway, someone else has noticed that they're good. Check out this article from Christianity Today on BADD. Then go click on some of the links to watch some BADD videos on YouTube. I guarantee you'll enjoy.

FIREPROOF

I haven't seen Fireproof, I don't know much about it, but I thought this post from Nikki Finke (the blogger/journalist who broke half the scoops during the strike) was interesting and seemed fair. The comments are also interesting -- a few nasty ones, but far fewer than one would expect.


I also found it interesting that Fireproof, which was moderately well-reviewed (50% at Rotten Tomatoes), apparently didn't release review copies to critics before the film opened. Might it have gotten better reviews if they had done so, rather than sending the tacit message that the film was a piece of garbage that they were trying to bury? Or did the filmmakers just assume they would get bad reviews, in essence not trusting what they had.

The movie opened surprisingly well. Not sure how it will hold its second weekend, though.

Let me know what you think of the Nikki Finke article. And, if you've seen it, of the film.

BACK TO THE RACE

Especially after the decimation of the TV season by the Writers Strike last year, it's nice to see shows coming back... I'm happy to see Heroes after so long (a little dark this season!), the new season of Dancing with the Stars looks pleasant. There are one or two new shows that look worth checking out...

But I'm so glad that The Amazing Race is back!

I realized how much I love this show when I found myself turning off the heat under my shrimp-and-Spanish-rice concoction last night (who cares if we eat late?!) to plant myself in hearing distance of Amazing Race last night. I didn't want to miss meeting the pairs of contestants (not a gay couple in sight, for a change), didn't want to miss the race to the airport.


I was especially pleased that they started off in Brazil this time, as a good chuck of the script we're writing for DreamWorks is set in Brazil (watching the less-than-genius frat boys climbing those stairs on their knees even gave me an idea for a couple of shots).

Most reality shows boil down to one primary element. Survivor is about political and physical survival. Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, Project Runway, So You Think You Can Dance are about mastering a set of skills across a limited variety of genres. And all of these are heavily dependent on personality.

Not so with The Amazing Race. No one's voting on the winners -- they have to get there themselves, and having a winning personality has a marginal effect. Yes, the physical aspects are important (last night's hippie beekeepers who were eliminated didn't seem to run a single step in the whole show). But if you're physically strong yet stupid, you're in trouble. Specific skills (say, reading a map) are important. Specific knowledge (say, of a given city or language or culture) is important. Improvisation is important, keeping an even keel is important, flexibility is important, perseverance is important.

I just love this show. It's deserved every Emmy it's won (six now, a total sweep since the Emmys began giving awards for reality show). I know exactly where I (or my Tivo) will be every Sunday night for the next few months.

So herewith is the first of this year's unofficial Lessons from The Amazing Race, courtesy of the beekeepers whose names I don't even remember: Sometimes you have to run to get where you're going.

It looks to be a great season. If you've never watched it, here's your chance to join the Race. On your mark, get set, go!

101 DOWN... 900 TO GO?

I can tell that Cory is truly my son because, like me, he is a sucker for lists. I think he spends entire evenings typing "top ten" or "top 100" into Google and seeing where it takes him. As for me, I am always happy to be able to codify anything -- anything -- into list form.

So this list of 1001 great novels was almost irresistible when it was forwarded to me (not too many top thousand lists out there!).


I'm not going to reproduce the whole thing, but it was fun going through and making (ahem) a list of the books I have read... and a few I tried but couldn't finish. (The list, by the way, is in reverse chronological order, which is interesting.)

Not surprisingly, I'm much better read a century or so back than I am a decade or so back... And I was quite surprised, by the way, not to find Pulitzer prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon on the list. And surprised to see, for instance, so many Douglas Adams books listed... But pleased to see so many sci-fi classics listed, not to mention the appearance of Agatha Christie and Edgar Rice Burroughs on the list.

How 'bout you? How many of the great novels have you read? (And what books do you think are missing?)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
Watchmen - Alan Moore and David Gibbons
Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The World According to Garp - John Irving
.....Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow -- (tried to read it, couldn't finish it)
Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris - Paul Gallico
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
Nighteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
The Plague - Albert Camus
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy Sayers
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
.....Kim - Rudyard Kipling (tried to read it, couldn't finish it)
The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
.....Ben-Hur - Lew Wallace (tried to read it, couldn't finish it)
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Doestoevsky
Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There - Lewis Carroll
.....War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (tried to read it, couldn't finish it)
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Water-Babies - Charles Kingsley
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
The Pit and the Pendulum - Edgar Allen Poe
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Emma - Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann von Goethe
Candide - Voltaire
Fanny Hill - John Cleland
Joseph Andrews - Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Robinsin Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francoise Rabelais
Aesop's Fables - Aesop

TIME FOR TWILIGHT?

A lot of the girls in Sabrina's class are reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Quite the publishing phenom, Twilight is now part of a hot series of books, the basis for an upcoming movie, and all the rage among adolescent girls.


It's about a girl who falls in love with a vampire (a "good" vampire, a, shall we say, "chaste" vampire).

Sabrina really wants to read this book. I'm hesitant. Quite hesitant. I'm on a wait list to get it from the library, but that could take a while.

So I'm just wondering if anyone out there has read it? Anyone have thoughts on its suitability for an 11- (almost 12-) year-old girl?

Thanks!

FIXING THE LINKS

Oops. If you logged on here in the last day or so and saw my post about the Harry Potter Lexicon, I'm happy to say that the Lexicon is not offline... It has simply moved, and the internal link to get to it from the old address is apparently not working.


Thanks to Elizabeth for the new link!

And I'm taking this opportunity to go into the infrastructure of this blog and fix several links that need updating.... A little maintenance, don't you know.

More posting soon!

TV THOUGHTS: THE EMMYS

What were they thinking?!

That was our thought as we sat watching the opening of the Emmys last night. Five reality show hosts -- the nominees for the first award in that category -- standing around a stage and talking about how they had "nothing" to say for what seemed like 10 minutes. They looked like idiots, they demeaned the show (and insulted its viewers), and they probably precipitated millions of people reaching for the remote.

I heard a comment today from someone in the audience who said the people around him thought they were being pranked, that the show hadn't really started yet. That's how bad it was.


All it proved was.... Reality shows need WRITERS! These guys are next to useless if someone doesn't give them words to say! Jeff Probst at least had the good sense to look embarrassed, Ryan Seacrest looked like a deer in the headlights... it was just a mess.

(The irony, of course, is that most of the nominated reality shows are written, but can't admit it because they don't want to pay their writers a realistic salary or provide benefits.)

And all that rambling and babbling and idiocy apparently took so much time that for the rest of the three hours, all we heard was how far behind they were, how all the presenters were having their bits cut as a result of it.

A few bright moments, virtually all provided by performers who actually have a history of performing live (and who therefore know what to do when in front of an audience, who even -- gasp! -- know how to read a teleprompter smoothly, something Oprah didn't even manage).

I've never been a Don Rickles fan. He's always been too mean-spirited for me (though, set against the mean-spiritedness of our current era, he seems positively tame). However, last night he earned every laugh, showing an ability to read a room, come up with a good spontaneous line, recognize when the written line wasn't working, and move smoothly around it. Good for him. And good for Kathy Griffin (again, a live performer, again someone who could handle something even marginally spontaneous) for screaming "Get - Up!" at the somnambulent audience when Rickles appeared and only about 20% of the room rose to their feet.

I also enjoyed Steve Martin's deadpan intro of Tommy Smothers' special Emmy (replacing the one he didn't win back in the 60's, having taken his name off the nomination list because he thought he would be too controversial) -- beautifully done and very funny. And Tommy (who spoke with odd timing -- has he had a stroke or something?) handled making a political comment with a good deal of subtlety and class.

I thought the set-recreation tributes to old shows was weak -- we don't remember the shows because of the sets, for goodness' sake. The Laugh-In number particularly failed. Cory walked back into the room while it was on and just stared, muttering, "What is this supposed to be?" And I thought it very inappropriate that the first clip they showed was the Seinfeld "Master of his domain" clip -- masturbation at 8:17 p.m.? We had to mute it because our kids were in the room. Bad call, TV academy.

I did enjoy Josh Groban's rendition of 30 or 20 theme songs -- I didn't know he had such range, frankly.


I was glad John Adams won -- though wondered why no one, not one person accepting an award, thanked Paul Giamatti. We were glad but not surprised that Amazing Race won. I was sorry that only one person mentioned the Writers Strike, which of course is the reason there was so much emphasis on reality this season -- though plenty of people gave shoutouts to their writers (many many more than on the Oscars), so props to them.

And boy, Tina Fey certainly had a great night! I bet she's single-handedly keeping the florist industry alive in New York today.

Next year, they should just get Don Rickles to host. And they should learn their lesson: Don't send "reality" folks on stage without those writers that they can't admit they actually have.