Happy birthday, Dick Van Dyke!

The venerable Dick Van Dyke turns 100 years old today!

Love him or hate him, you have to admit the guy had talent as a singer, dancer, and comedian. Here's a dance scene from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang":

Or how about this hilarious clip from "The Carol Burnett Show":

Happy birthday, Mr. Van Dyke.

God bless America, John Wayne style

Reader Stephen forwarded the most awesome video clip. It was filmed in 1970. Somehow I doubt it could be recreated today with the current crop in Hollywood.

Check. It. Out.



Thanks Stephen!

The sad life of Johnny Depp

My kids are great fans of Johnny Depp since they've enjoyed watching his various movie roles. There's no question he's a talented actor who's brought iconic roles to life, particularly Captain Jack Sparrow.

But as with so many people for whom fame came hard and fast, his personal life is predictably imploding. Consider this article entitled "The Trouble With Johnny Depp: Multimillion-dollar lawsuits, a haze of booze and hash, a marriage gone very wrong and a lifestyle he can’t afford."

It's a long and depressing read and almost sounds like Depp is a "lost boy" who never quite grew up. It discusses how the $650 million he made from his films is now gone, he's alone with no family, he's drinking and doing drugs, he's losing his acting ability ... It makes me wonder how long until we read the shocked headlines of his passing through some drug-induced accident?

Depp and I are the same age, 55. Somehow I feel richer, far richer, than Depp ever was even at the height of his fame.

Sigh. What a shame.

Dysfunctional Hollywood

One of the trends we've noticed in movies over the last few years is to make every family dysfunctional. I think the logic is that movies are supposed to reflect "reality" (which, sadly, they might), and since apparently no one in Hollywood believes there are any happy, stable families left in existence, they film what they (think they) know. The trend is so strong that nowadays it's impossible for Hollywood to depict a "traditional" family in a positive light. If a nuclear family is actually (gasp) intact, then it means everyone is full of angst, anger, addictions, affairs, or other vices.

I remember finding a movie remake of the 1960s television series Lost in Space. The Robinsons in the original Lost in Space, if you recall, were a close and loving family who had all sorts of campy adventures; but no one doubted the strength of their family ties.

However in the movie remake, everyone hated each other. The family unit, naturally, had to be dysfunctional. Sheesh, folks, would you really send a family into space when they were already at each others' throats? Does that sound like a recipe for success in interstellar exploration?

So anyway, this evening Don was looking through some listings of movie releases when he came across a movie blurb so extraordinary that he read it out loud:

Desperate to get out from under her overprotective mother, a home-schooled teen runs off to live with her dad, and forms a bond with his much-younger boyfriend.

Whaaaa...???

The movie, entitled Sassy Pants, was released last year.

To conceive of such a stoopid plot, it's as if, literally, Hollywood simply cannot fathom a family that actually gets along. Everyone has to be dysfunctional. On the IMDB page, someone left a note: Worst mother since Mommy Dearest. Then of course she's representative of ALL homeschooling moms, right?

"Who thinks of these plots?" I groused.

"Hollywood," replied Don. "They probably said to themselves, 'Let's make a movie that reflects our viewpoint on something we know nothing about. Since no one could possibly like being homeschooled, and people probably just homeschool to hide the bruises anyway, let's have a plot with a dysfunctional family and give it a modern twist.'"

I guess this is how Hollywood defines normal.

We don't watch a lot of movies in our family, and if this is the drivel coming out of Tinseltown, I guess we're not missing much. Anyway, I can assure you we will never ever see this film.

Personally I don't think it's homeschooling families that are dysfunctional. It's Hollywood.

Hollywood vs. Real America

There is a television series that's just hit the prime time called (pardon my language) Good Christian Bitches (later modified to Good Christian Belles after the understandable outcry). It's made by the creators of "Sex and the City," so I guess that tells you something. We don't have television reception so I've never seen this latest example of Hollywood art, but I gather the basic premise is to show how Christian women are nothing but a bunch of biblical hypocrites. Ha ha -- it's so amusing, don't you think, to watch women be catty? And placing them in a church environment just seals the deal, in the opinion of Hollywood.

(Just as an aside, imagine a Hollywood brainchild called "Good Jewish Bitches" or "Good Muslim Bitches" and see how quickly the producers would get flayed. But hey, it's open season on Christians.)

This show is apparently full of splendid advice, such as "cleavage lets your cross hang straight" and other useful suggestions.

As I see it, this is just the latest example of Hollywood's absolute disdain for Middle America and its values. I was going to link to a trailer to demonstrate my point, but after watching it I didn't want my girls to see the shocking content, so I found another, slightly less racy trailer (here). And keep that in mind: the first trailer I found was so shocking I didn't want my girls to see it... yet this show is now on prime time television, where young people all over America can hear the catty language and watch the degrading situations played out in this sitcom.

As with any television show, the actors and actresses involved are drop-dead beautiful. But what good is all that beauty if its purpose is to ridicule and scorn an enormous segment of our nation? Its whole essence is the mockery of values, particularly Christian values. Such ideals as modesty and chastity are held in contempt as unattainable and unrealistic (and unnecessary) goals. The nuclear family is shown as dysfunctional (of course) and a source of oppression for women (of course). It's considered "empowering" for women to dress like skanks and seduce men away from their marriage vows. It's sole purpose, apparently, is to illustrate (with the help of lots of cleavage) how religion is bad.

But no one ever talks about how religion is good -- how many lives have been turned around, how many overwhelmed people have found solace, how many challenges have been overcome because of faith (and this doesn't even examine how many souls are saved).

What it comes down to is Hollywood's persistent ambition to demonstrate how secular life is vastly superior to religious life. The pious are hypocrites and idiots. All devout church-goers are in reality closet deviants bent on fulfilling their animal urges. And somehow, in some way, Christian values are to blame for it all.

Now this petty and superficial television show is moving into the prime time, where countless numbers of young people, whose faith may still be fragile, will fall under its outwardly-beautiful and glamorous sway.

So anyway, this morning I was writing this blog piece and getting on my high horse when I got bumped down to earth by a sobering piece written by columnist Dennis Prager. It seems he and his wife, who are traveling in Australia, met a young waitress from Iran who was raised Muslim. Due to the violence she saw around her while growing up, she now considers herself an atheist.

"Nothing produces atheists like despicable religious people," writes Prager. "They do far more harm to religious faith than all the atheist writers and activists in the world put together."

This statement made me wince because there are far too many times when Christians are seen in a similar light. While I can't go into details, let's just say I'm in a position to see a LOT of chatter back and forth between the political left and the political right, between atheists and Christians, between progressives and conservatives. Many people will claim that conservatives are more verbally restrained than the name-calling and vitriol that marks the left; but I'm here to tell you it ain't necessarily so. There is just as much mud-slinging, name-calling, and nasty language coming from so-called Christians; and it serves to reinforce every bad opinion atheists could ever hold of us.

As a Christian I am held to high standards, standards I continuously fail to meet (which is where forgiveness of my sins is so comforting). Nonetheless those standards are there, and I must strive toward them. I must guard my tongue and my (typing) fingers from falling into the classic human failings of gossip, name-calling, and hypocrisy. In other words, I -- and every other person who calls him or herself a Christian -- must be ambassadors for our faith. We must represent the goodness and mercy of Jesus, not the gossip and slander that GCB illustrates.

I'll fail, of course. But at least I have a Higher Authority to whom I can lift my fallen eyes and beg forgiveness.

But you still won't catch me watching Good Christian "Belles" any time soon.

A Hollywood unit of measure

I don't follow Hollywood twaddle as a rule. It just doesn't interest me. But even in rural Idaho, we can't help hearing the news headlines that emerge from the land of glitz and glamor.

The other day my Older Daughter turned to me and asked when her father and I got married. "In May of 1990," I replied. "Why?"

There was a pause. "Then you've been married 109 Kardashians," she said.

"Huh?"

Come to find out she was using a nifty new online tool called the Kardashian Calculator which determines how many "Kardashians" you've been married. And a Kardashian, as you may deduce, is a unit of measure representing 72 days of marriage, in (cough) honor of Kim Kardashian's short-lived eternal vows.

And yet our culture still looks up to these Hollywood twits as if they were someone to admire.

It's funny how my respect for an actor or actress (despite our almost inevitable difference in political opinion) increases when I learn they can actually keep their marriage together. For example, back in the late 70s when Star Wars was first released, I -- along with millions of other teenage girls -- developed a serious crush on actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker. But as the years went by I forgot all about him, and in fact never gave him much thought for several decades.

Recently I got curious about what he'd been doing since I last paid attention, and decided to look him up. Come to find out he's been faithfully been married since 1978 (that's about 171 Kardashians). Whatever else you can say about him, my estimation of him immediately ratcheted up because here's a rare Hollywood type who can keep his vows.

But of course we'll never hear about this in the headlines. Glitter and glitz, drama and crisis, is what makes the news. But if you're going to admire a Hollywood actor, go for the ones who truly DO offer an example to emulate.