THE AMAZING RACE BACK AGAIN!

I'm always happy when The Amazing Race starts its season.  I don't know what it is about the show that makes it my ultimate must-see every year.  Maybe it's the fact that when Lee and I were first dating, before we'd even started writing together, we planned massive city-wide road rallies for our friends (sort of like grand scavenger hunts, without the "roadblocks" and "detours," etc. of Amazing Race).  Maybe it's the interactivity of it, as our whole family, watching together, chooses up who would do which challenge when paired with which family member.  Maybe it's the wild world travelogue aspect of the show...

Whatever it is, I sure love this show.

And the new season didn't disappoint.  I loved seeing so many of the teams boasting about how strong they are... then learning that the first challenge would be a mental (pattern-recognition) one.  I loved the twist of eliminating a team before they even started the Race -- though I ached at the very thought of how it would feel to be that team.  (I didn't ache for long though, as the eliminated team was one of the "we're so awesome" boasters.)

Loved the Japanese game show!  I felt as if TAR was saying to certain other game shows on TV, "Sure, go ahead and mimic a Japanese game show all you want -- we'll take you to the real thing!"  What a clever way to get the eating challenge out of the way!  (And just for the record:  If Cory and I were teamed, Cory would do the challenge because he loves hot, spicy stuff.  If it were Lee and I, Lee would do it.  If it were Sabrina and I, I think I'd be stuck doing it.)

I was happy with the team that got eliminated:  Mr. "I'm a trial attorney so I'm smarter and tougher than anyone else here, and oh, let me roll up my t-shirt sleeves so I can show you my awesome guns" and his long-suffering, I'm sure, not-good-enough-for-him-to-marry girlfriend.  Mr. Attorney deserved the shock.  And Ms. Girlfriend deserves someone better -- Hopefully the Race will have helped her to realize that!

My favorite team so far has to be Zev and Justin -- the Asperger's syndrome guy and his brother.  I love Zev for giving away his jacket to a cold Japanese guy who didn't have one, love his great attitude.  

Finally, The Amazing Race always leaves us with a lesson, and this week was a good one, courtesy of our stealth poker players.

"Stealth," you ask?  Well, yes.  Because one team is a pair of female professional poker players.  But, in a secretive version of "we're so awesome" boasting, they felt that if they told everyone what they do for a living, they'd be seen as a massive, unbeatable threat.  (Huh?)  So they told everyone they work for a non-profit that helps homeless people.

(And God bless Zev, who mused on camera that he wasn't sure he believed them, because they just didn't feel like people who worked with the homeless, because he thought people who worked with the homeless would be so much kinder.)

Nice stealthy plan -- until, in the Tokyo airport, a random guy walked up to them and called them out.  He recognized them, and was pushing one of the girls -- "You're, like, number 15 in the world or something, right?"  And she, in a burst of faux modesty, admitted that yes, she was indeed a bona fide celebrity.  She did this, unfortunately, right in front of most of the other teams.

Now, I'm just sayin', is that how you put your poker playing prowess to work for you on the Race?  Shouldn't the correct (poker faced) answer be, "I'm sorry, you must have me confused with someone else.  I don't believe in gambling"?  What does she do at the poker table, jump and squeal with pleasure when she's dealt an ace?

So this week's life lesson from the Amazing Race:  If you think people will be mad at you if they know who you really are, just think how mad they'll be when they find out you've been lying about who you really are.

Can't wait for next week!

MOVIE THOUGHTS: FAME

As Sabrina and I were walking out of the house to see Fame, Cory asked where we were going.  I answered, "We're gonna make it to heaven.  Light up the sky like a flame."  He rolled his eyes.  Which prompted me to respond (say it with me), "We're gonna live forever.  Baby, remember my name."  At which point, I knew I should leave the room before he threw something at me.

But as we got into the car, Sabrina asked where those words came from.  Turns out she had heard of Fame (the original movie, I assume), but she had never heard the song.

The movie itself is pleasant.  Its very loose and rambling 5-act structure (audition day plus each of the four years at "PA," the never-fully-named New York High School of the Performing Arts) didn't bother me.  There's some nice singing, some good musicianship (all by the musicians playing offscreen, with careful close-ups of those hands on the keyboard), and some decent dancing.  (The dance in the cafeteria is particularly fun.)  And there are a few genuinely moving moments and storylines.

There are also some strong performances, more from the actors playing teachers than from the young, often overacting students.  Charles S. Dutton is terrific as the acting teacher, and Kelsey Grammer gives a nice, restrained performance that paints a pretty full picture of his character in only a few scenes.

(I found myself, in fact, responding more emotionally to the teachers than to the students.  Maybe it's because the students' journeys are so predictable:  They want to be stars, they realize they actually have to work hard, they undergo successes and disappointments, they bond with each other in the process...  Or maybe it's because I am now a professor teaching students (themselves only a few years older than those in the movie) skills they need to survive in a dog-eat-anything-in-its-way world, so I just related more...)

Much of the film falls into that "sure, why not?" realm of movie choice.  Yes, there are elements that could be better:  Show us more of the kids' lives at home.  Lose the unbelievable "filmmaker" character (in a school which doesn't appear to teach film).  Work a little harder on a less vignette-driven structure.  Get rid of the overdesaturation of color.  Show an onscreen response to the two characters who drop out of school.  But all in all, a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

Until the end.  

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It's the end of senior year.  Naturi Naughton (in the Irene Cara role) has come out of her classical pianist shell to emerge as a powerful singer.  She takes the lead in the big senior show, which is powerful and flashy and conveys the real energy of 18-year-olds about to conquer the world.  The momentum builds... and builds.  And we know what's coming, and we're ready, we're so ready, we know what song she's going to sing, and it's going to bring down the house, and we probably won't be able to keep ourselves from singing along--

And the movie's over.  And nobody ever sang the song "Fame."

Yeah, sure, the song shows up over the end credits.  Big whoop.  Wrong choice....  Someone told me they'd heard the filmmakers say they didn't sing the song onscreen because they didn't think they could come up to the level of the original.  Really?  Then don't remake the movie!  I'm sorry, but when you remake Fame, you have made a contract with the audience to give us that specific moment.

Surrounded by a theatre of people saying, "Huh?  That's it?" my opinion went from "Nice" to "Fail."  

We came home, a bit disappointed, and Sabrina wandered off to her room, and a few minutes later, I heard her singing....  "I wanna live forever...  I wanna learn how to fly -- high!... I feel it coming together..."

She heard the song over the credits for the first time in her life, and she came home singing it.  And believe me, it was the only song worth singing on the way out of the theatre... I can't remember a single other piece of music.

A nice try, undermined by one very bad choice.  A pleasant movie, but this one ain't gonna live forever... because it never aspired to learn how to fly high.

SURVIVOR: SAMOA: EVIL ON THE PROWL

I don't know how many of you are still watching Survivor on a regular basis. Every season we think, "Oh, we'll just pass on Survivor this year." And sometimes we have. We've missed a couple of seasons, we've picked up the show mid-season sometimes. But once we tune and get acclimated to the current cast of contestants, we know we can depend on Survivor for an hour of solid entertainment. And our kids still both love the show, which makes it "must-see" TV for that reason alone.

But every now and then Survivor *earns* a "must-see" label. And with only one episode aired so far, this season could turn out to be one of those years. Because of Russell.

Now, there are actually two Russell's on the show, but if you watched, you know the one I mean. I mean Evil Russell.

Yes, "evil" is a pretty strong word. But I think Russell earns it.

Russell first came to our attention when he immediately began to form alliances with all the pretty girls on his team. Nothing new there -- Pretty girls use their looks often blatantly to get ahead on Survivor (often mirroring real life). But Russell wasn't gloating in his one-on-one-time-with-the-camera about how he was getting so much attention from the hotties. No, he was bragging about how he was going to control the game, and how stupid the girls were not to notice. Yeah, yeah, we've heard that before, too. Doesn't make him evil.

However, Russell's next move caught my attention. In the middle of the night, with everyone asleep, he got up and poured out the contents of everyone's canteens. Yes, "fire is life" in Survivor, we hear it every week. But water is life, too. And he capped it off by randomly burning someone's socks -- no animus against anyone in particular, he didn't even know whose socks they were. He did it just because he could.

And I thought instantly of Dallas Willard's words after 9/11, when he explained that evil doesn't need a cause. Evil is a choice. It doesn't have to justify itself, it doesn't have to make sense, and sometimes it can't be explained. That describes what Russell did: He made a choice to do something to hurt others, for no reason. Just because he could.

Well, his tribe lost the immunity challenge, and the scrambling got underway. And one sweet girl, Marisa, commented to Russell that he sure seemed to be talking to a lot of people one-on-one, and it made her wonder whether she could trust her alliance with him. A fairly innocuous comment, the kind of thing we see all the time on Survivor. And the response is usually, "Of course you can trust me! I'm talking to the others to find out what's going on, but you're my alliance!" Sometimes the person's lying, sometimes not. Usually that's where it ends.

But not with Russell. He immediately set out to destroy Marisa. Playing the aggrieved party, he went around the camp talking about how Marisa was saying terrible things about him and how he felt he could never trust her again and no one else should trust her. And since there wasn't any really obvious candidate to be voted off the island, most everyone seemed relieved that someone was making a decision for them.

Not everyone fell for it. Betsy, a cop who doesn't seem to have let anyone know she's a cop, doesn't trust Russell. He reminds her too much of crooks she deals with at home. But so far all she has to go on is her instincts. When she expressed doubt about Russell to another contestant who asked why, Betsy couldn't give a reason. But those instincts are working, Betsy! Here's hoping she continues to keep her doubts to herself.

Marisa was voted off. Not because she deserved it, not because she blew a challenge, not because she didn't work around the camp, not because she was obnoxious. She was voted off because she was foolish enough to express lack of trust to the most untrustworthy, the most evil, the most lying contestant Survivor has seen this side of the original Jonny Fairplay. (And the difference between Fairplay and Russell helps me understand the old Dungeons and Dragons distinction between "chaotic evil" -- Jonny -- and "lawful evil" -- Russell. Lawful evil is much worse.)

We don't get to see evil at work out in the open often. People shy away from it, don't like to call it by name. Peter Coyote was once asked why he plays so many villains and he said (paraphrase) that he considers it an honor to play a villain, because it lets the audience see what evil looks like so they can recognize it when they see it again.

There are other reasons to watch Survivor this season. The show has smartly made it easier to track the teams by having them all dress in the same colors. And Samoa is just drop-dead gorgeous.

But for at least another week -- and I expect several more weeks -- at our house, we will be watching to see evil in action, to see what Russell does next. Sure, maybe he'll repent and quit (Jonny Fairplay did, after all, the second time around). But I doubt it. And in the meantime, we will get to see evil in action, the better to recognize it when we see it in the real world.

WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE.... THE CHURCH HISTORY VERSION

Sometimes you get a idea that's sort of amusing. "Wouldn't that be fun?" you muse. "Wouldn't that be cute" And usually the idea goes away.

But sometimes it doesn't.

Many, many months ago, our senior pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian, Mark Brewer, started a series on church history and what we can learn from it. "The More Things Change," he called it. He'd do a few weeks, break to talk about something out, then come back to it. One week per century.

And around the 4th or 5th century, I found myself musing... Wouldn't it be fun to put this whole series to music? Wouldn't it be fun to make a video set to, say, Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Cute idea. And surprisingly, one that didn't go away.

By the 11th century, I'd started taking notes. I went back to listen to the first 10 centuries online. I started looking for rhymes...

And finally, I sat down and made this video. With help from the rest of the fam. I wrote the lyrics and gathered the photos. Cory did the rough cut. I did the final cut and the effects. Lee mixed the music, and Lee and Sabrina did the singing.

It was a blast. 20 centuries of church history in 4 minutes and 17 seconds. Enjoy!

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

When your kids start Kindergarten, you get to hold their hands and walk them in to their first big adventure.  You get to meet the teachers, chat with the other moms, stay to salute the flag.

You don't get to do that when your kids start at a new high school, or even middle school.

Today was the first day for Cory and Sabrina at Harvard-Westlake.   A new and wonderful (and challenging!) adventure begins today.

A lot of moms from Sabrina's old school have been reacting to the realization that they missed opening day "flag line" at the old school (morning announcements, welcome, flag salute).  I didn't really miss it at all.  We have been ready to move forward for quite some time.  

But then I dropped them off today, and all of a sudden it hit me.  I wasn't going to get to walk them to their locker, or to their first class.   I wasn't going to get to meet their teachers.  And yes,  I'm smart enough to know that even thinking of doing such would bring down such a mighty deluge of embarrassment as to derail all their future hopes and dreams.

All I could do was give advice.  

Figure out the relationship between your locker and your classes because 5 minutes isn't going to be enough to get to your locker and class between every period.  Make sure you have decent underwear on because, yes, you really will have to get undressed in front of everyone before PE.  Sharpen your pencils.  Don't leave musical instruments outside leaning up against your locker.  Yes, you will have homework, even on the first day -- that's what your study periods are for.   Make friends.  Listen to your teachers.   Eat a healthy lunch.  Learn something.

I'm on the sidelines now.  Even if they wanted me to help with, say, homework, chances are I wouldn't be able to.  

And that's as it should be.  

Good luck, kids.  Make me proud.

A SMIDGEN OF TRUTH

I have been getting literally sick to my stomach lately watching just a smidgen of the bile and bilk being flung around the airwaves and netwaves these days.  (And I watch very, very little of it.)

Health insurance!  The President talks to students about education!  Teddy Kennedy!.... Whatever.  For me, far outweighing any of the subjects-of-the-day is the tone and truthfulness with which these subjects are discussed.

I am bothered by the amount of sheer lying going on.  But far beyond that, I am much more deeply bothered by the fact that people out there -- millions of them, apparently -- are believing the lies.

Let's face it, I'm the one who used to pay my kids every time they spotted a lie in the media (Especially in TV ads).  I don't really expect full truth in an ad-driven culture.  And given that politicians have, for the most part, turned into advertisers, pimping the "causes" that will get them elected again, I don't particularly expect truth from them.

Sadly, nor do I expect truth from most non-print journalists.  Journalists should be our modern prophets.  But that advertising-driven culture of ours means that, now that network news is no longer seen as a public service, virtually every media-driven "news" show really has one goal.  No, not to tell the truth.  And not even to push their own agenda.  Their goal is to get their show renewed, to stay on the air.  (Just as Rita Skeeter told Hermione, when Hermione asked if the Daily Prophet existed to tell people what they wanted to hear:  "The Daily Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl.")

I guess I thought most people were savvy enough to catch on to this.  But, again, apparently millions are not.

Which makes Sean Gaffney's recent posts of vital interest in this day and age.  If you care at all about truth (as opposed to truthiness), you should read what Sean has to say.

SO THIS IS "FILLER"

I had already started to write a post here about Family Camp, in fact was in the middle of writing it, when the phone rang to tell me my mother had just died suddenly.  

Looking back over that partial post, it feels like it happened in another century.  I can't even imagine finishing it; doing so would feel as if I were pretending my mom was still here...

But it's September, we made it through the funeral, we're all back to school in six days (I went back to school at USC two weeks ago), we have a script that's due, and it's time to reboot in every way.

I started writing again this morning.  Just some tweaking of a big action scene per our studio notes.  But it felt good.

And while I don't feel up to posting about that so-long-in-the-distant-past week at Family Camp (less than three weeks ago in "real" time), I need to at least tip my hat to camp by posting, as is my tradition, the lyrics to Cory and Max's hit song of the year.

For those of you who have been reading this blog less than a year.... Every year Cory and his best-friend-at-church Max perform a parody song at the Family Camp talent show.  Over the past six years they have developed quite a fan following, and every year the pressure's on.

We knew that this year they really had to do Michael Jackson.  But we couldn't come up with an idea.  So we wrote a song about not coming up with an idea.  (Lee and I have always written the song -- this year, Cory and Max contributed some lyrics -- awesome!)

It is, of course, set to MJ's "Thriller."  ("Thriller" is cut differently from the video to the single -- this is an amalgamation of both versions.)  I will try to post their video soon (no firewire input on this computer, makes it more complicated than it should be)....

And yes, they did the dance.  They were awesome.

Here are this year's lyrics....

FILLER

It's close to showtime

An epic fail 'cause we don't have a song

And now there's no time

I guess we really put this off too long

I had a dream

That people laughed and booed us out of New Tab

I need to scream

Each year our fans expect us to get fresher

There's too much pressure

So this is Filler

Filler's what

We're churning out so far

The Talent Show's in half an hour

Last year was killer

But this year's not

All in all I think we left it

Just a 

Little

Too late

Procrastination

We spent too many hours by the pool

We're on vacation

We shouldn't have to work like we're in school

But now we need

A shiny bright idea that is gold-plated

And we concede

The truth is we were always overrated

We could be hated

For singing Filler

Through the night

From the opening to the chorus

Hope they don't say, "Why'd'ya bore us?"

Singing Filler

Can't be right

The Max and Cory legend is a-

-Bout to

Come to 

An end

Everyone's calling 

To ask what we're doing in the Talent Show

Have to keep stalling

How can we tell them the truth?

We still don't know

This is the end of our lives

It's a disaster

Our reputation's going down the drain

If we sing faster

Then maybe they won't see that we're in pain

We'll close our eyes

And hope we get a stroke of inspiration

We'll improvise

And pray that no one listens to the words

[SPOKEN:]  I really like birds...?

So this is Filler

Through the night

Saying nothing controversial

We're just tryin' to be commercial

Singing Filler

Might be right

If we cover up our lameness

With some dance moves

Cool moves

Quick moves

Let's dance!

[DANCE BREAK]

So this is Filler

Rock the night away

With lots of empty phrases

And a shameless lack of content

Filler 

With a killer bite

This could be the masterpiece, yeah

That will

Rock them

Tonight!