Studying for Future Generations

“Do you need a right-handed or a left-handed door?”

“Let’s go with right-handed.”

“Do you need shims?”

“Shims?”

“To help secure the door frame.”

“Well, I have a guy who is hanging it for me.”

“He’ll probably need them. If he doesn’t get it aligned properly, ask for your money back and come back to the store to get some shims.”

“I’ll just take the shims right now.”

“How about door hangers?”

“Door hangers?”

“They help align the door.”

At this point, the Menards employee knew he was dealing with a guy who had no earthly idea what he was doing. He placed the door hangers (which look like brackets) on the door frame and tried to explain how to use them. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I took the door hangers anyway.

“How about paint?”

“Isn’t the door already painted?”

“It’s primed.”

“No paint. A primed door is good enough.”

On my way home, I couldn’t help but wonder how my grandfather, who lived through the Great Depression and could fix anything, would have reacted to my lack of hardware knowledge. Then I remembered a quote from the John Adams HBO miniseries.

When Adams (portrayed by Paul Giamatti) arrived in Paris to ask the French for naval support of the American cause, he found a culture he’s unfamiliar with – one much slower and engaged in the arts. Over a meal, he is asked about music and his response is thought-provoking.

“I must study politics and war, you see, so that my sons will have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons must study navigation, commerce and agriculture so that their children will have the right to study painting and poetry and music.”

My grandfather was on the front end of this spectrum in my family. He studied finance and repair, so his sons would have the liberty to study genealogy and photography. His sons studied sales and management so their sons, including me, would have the right to study literature and writing.

This is not lost on me.

When a generation stops thinking about, appreciating and building on the sacrifices of the previous generation, we become self-absorbed. But when we build on the sacrifices of previous generations, it gives us a chance to live beyond ourselves.

I have a feeling my grandfather wouldn’t be disappointed in my visit to Mendards. Instead, he would smile about the fact that his sacrifices allowed me to become a writer. But he would also want to make sure I’m not taking my liberty for granted, and he would want to make sure I’m studying something for the next generation so they will have the freedom to pursue something they love.

He’s been gone for nearly 30 years, but I can still hear the question he might ask me: What are you studying that will benefit and allow the next generation to pursue what they love?

I would tell him technology. I’m not crazy about learning new technology. In fact, sometimes I find it maddening. But in the same manner in which he was able to teach himself how to repair lawnmower and dryer engines so he could fix appliances in my family when they went out, I have a knack for learning technology and then passing that information along to loved ones, which I hope empowers them in some small way.

How about you? I would love to hear about the sacrifices the people made in your family which allowed you the freedom to pursue what you love. And then tell me what you are doing for the generation behind you.

‘Parenthood’ Season Finale Satisfying; Is it the End?

Ray Romano plays Hank
Photo: Tom Caltabiano,
Wikimedia Commons

I wrote an article for Yahoo! Voices about the season four finale of NBC’s Parenthood that aired last night. If you are interested, here’s the beginning of the article, followed by a link.

The season four finale of NBC’s Parenthood felt like a series finale.

Kristina got an all-clear on her cancer, at least for now, and she ended up on a beach in Hawaii with Adam. Drew was accepted into Berkeley, severing ties with Amy, who is bound for Tufts in Boston. Joel and Julia officially adopted Victor. Jasmine tells Crosby she’s pregnant. And Amber and Ryan got back together. Ryan even got his job back.

Sarah’s storyline is a bit of a loose end. She rejected Mark in favor of Hank and then learns Hank is moving to Minnesota to be near his daughter. Even though he asks Sarah to join him there, you get the feeling she won’t. So, maybe her storyline isn’t really a loose end.

The beauty of Parenthood is its humanity. It’s not as much about whether the characters will make the right decisions as it is about how the Braverman family rallies around each other, even when they don’t agree. The overriding theme of the series is that their love for one another conquers their disagreements and heartaches and they find great security in that – so much so that they reach out to others in their own brokenness and pain.

The season finale contained several such moments.

Keep reading

From One Generation to the Next

I flipped open a used copy of Mark Levin’s book, Ameritopia, at Half Price Books last night to read the table of contents, and a handwritten note fell out. You can see a picture of it on the right. You may need to click on the photo to make it big enough to read.

The note is from a mother who is writing to her daughter, Holly. Holly’s mother gave her the book because she feels a duty to our ancestors who fought in the American Revolution. She wants Holly to learn about and understand what is going on in the world right now in light of what the founding fathers taught.

You can feel the mother’s passion, but apparently she didn’t get through to Holly with her gift, given that Holly sold the book to a used bookstore, note and all, for a dollar or two. It makes me wonder if Holly even opened the book. If she had, why would she leave her mother’s note inside?

And check out the date on the note: October 29, 2013. Mom got the year wrong. She must have meant to write October 29, 2012 (the book came out in 2012, so it couldn’t have been any other year). If she gave her the book at the end of October – just a little over a month ago, then Holly’s reaction appears to have been a visceral one.

Maybe she is tired of Mom harping on her about why she should care about the founding principles of our nation and she got rid of the book as quickly as she received it. Or tragically, maybe Holly died recently and her possessions, including this book, were dispersed.

I don’t know how the book ended up at Half Price Books, but the note inside makes me feel squeamish. The tone has a hint of condescension and none of us respond well to that. Teaching foundational principles about government, or anything else, has less to do with teaching them, and more to do with showing them.

Think about the best teachers you’ve had in your lifetime. Before you allowed them to shape you, they had to earn the right to do so. In high school, I had an English teacher named Mr. Martin who inspired me to write – partially because of his passion for the written word and partially because he wrote (you can read more about my experience with him here).

He didn’t tell us to write, or try to explain the importance of writing. Instead, we traveled to exciting worlds created by authors and he read some of his own writing to us. Eventually, he started a journal called “Fine Lines” and encouraged us to submit to it. By igniting a passion for the written word inside me, he earned the right to teach me how to write.

Ironically, the introduction of the book Holly’s mother gave her includes this quote from Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on to them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

My heart aches for Holly’s mother because her note implies that she didn’t hand on the principles of freedom to Holly as Holly was growing up. Or maybe she did, but Holly just was not open to learning them. Maybe Holly’s mother was late to the party, only coming to an understanding later in life and now she feels desperate to pass along what she has learned. I don’t know. But this post isn’t really about Holly and her mother, nor is it intended to be critical of either of them.

Instead, it prompts this question: how do we pass along the type of freedom Reagan spoke about – one that the founders used to refer to as responsible freedom, rather than one that is self-focused – to the next generation? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Practically speaking, I think we do so by talking about the issues of the day over dinner with our kids. We use our freedom to help others in our communities and we involve our children. We look for teaching moments in pop culture, rather than simply consuming or avoiding it. We get involved and stay involved in the political process, without assassinating the character of our political opponents.

What else?

Our Representatives

Photo: Peter Martorano

I know I’m a day late in posting this. I returned home from a writers conference in New Mexico on Monday night, so I took Tuesday off to recharge my batteries.

Since I did not have much time to blog at the conference, I pressed the play button on my cell phone on my drive home and recorded several messages that have been floating around in my mind as possible blog posts. They are raw and you’ll hear some background noise (such as static from my car stereo), but they are also honest.

I’m calling this first one “Our Representatives,” which is fitting given that election day was yesterday. This isn’t about politics though. It’s about the people we choose to represent our neck of the woods to the rest of the world. I hope you enjoy it. [If you subscribe to this blog via email, you won’t be able to listen to the audio post without clicking through to the blog.]

The first couple of words of this audio post were cut off because I started speaking too early, but you will still get the gist of the message. If you cannot get the audio player below to work, you can listen by clicking this link.

Three Reasons I Dig The American Bible Challenge

My mom is a huge GSN (Game Show Network) fan.

Over the years as I have visited her, we have watched hundreds of episodes of various game shows, including The Pyramid, Whammy, 1 vs. 100, Lingo, Deal or No Deal, Minute to Win It, Family Feud, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and most recently The American Bible Challenge.

I love The American Bible Challenge for several reasons.

1. It provides a great opportunity to talk about eternal matters. My mom and I have different faith traditions. But the Bible is common ground and watching a TV show in which the Bible is front and center leads to natural conversations about what it says.


2. The contestants aren’t playing for themselves. Instead they are playing for the charity of their choice. The team that won the first season (Team Judson’s Legacy, which you can read more about here) won $100,000 for an organization that is fighting the disease their child died from in 2007. That made the grand finale emotional to watch.


3. It is humbling and challenging. During some episodes, from the comfort of a recliner, I get as many as 75% of the answers correct. During other episodes, I get less than half correct. But I love seeing people who are passionate about God’s Word trying to process the correct answers under pressure, since so much of life is lived under pressure.

Have you seen the show?

Glamping, Knork and Suburgatory

Here is what glamping looks like.
Photo: Stephanie Chapman

I heard three more new to me words this past week: glamping, knork and suburgatory.

The in thing is to combine two known words into a new one to more accurately portray a concept as we live it out in the twenty-first century. I’m a word person, so I find this fascinating. Here is a breakdown of the three new to me words.

Glamping. This one isn’t so new. The NY Times did an article about the trend in 2008. Glamping is glamorous camping. Rather than sleeping in a tiny tent in a sleeping bag on the ground in the woods, people who go glamping sleep on a real mattress (often on a real bed) in a huge prepitched tent, tepee or yurt on a resort or campground and the structure contains modern day amenities (e.g. dresser, nightstand, lamps).

As with everything else, there are websites dedicated to glamping, such as Glamping.com, GoGlamping.net and Glamping Girl.

From what I can tell, glamping is expensive – so expensive that I would rather just rent a cabin somewhere. But I do like the idea of glamping since I’m not the most outdoorsy person you’ll ever meet.

Knork. Not to be confused with a spork, a knork is a knife and fork combined into one eating utensil. The premise is, if you buy the product, you can eat with just one hand, cutting and eating your food with the same utensil. About.com goes into detail about why this might be a good invention:

I was pleasantly surprised that the design of the Knork® actually works well, much better than a standard fork. The beveled edge combined with a rocking motion cut smoothly through every cooked food I tried it on. It’s perfect for stand-up parties, when you have to hold your plate in one hand and the utensil in the other. You only have to juggle one utensil, instead of a knife and a fork.

Aside from lazy eaters like me, the Knork® can be a valuable tool for the temporarily-injured or physically-challenged. Those who can only use one hand due to broken bones, strokes, or similar medical conditions will find this utensil quite useful.

Before I read these two paragraphs, I wondered why in the world we needed another eating utensil, but what the writer said makes perfect sense.

Suburgatory. I saw an advertisement over the weekend for an ABC sitcom that goes by this name. I have never heard of it, but it is going into its second season. Obviously, the word is a combination of suburban and purgatory.

The series is about a father who moves his daughter from New York City to the suburbs so she’ll have a better life, but his daughter is creeped out by how perfect everything (and everybody) seems to be in their new location.

Several people online have described the series as “The Stepford Wives” meets “Mean Girls,” which makes me wonder if even the description should be combined as, “The Mean Stepford Wives.”

How about you? Have you heard any new to you words that combine two existing words? Share them in the comments.

Touching Wounds

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. —Henri Nouwen

Jillian Jensen’s audition on the season premier of the X Factor USA on Wednesday was memorable for so many reasons. She was bullied in middle school and she carried the pain with her as she walked on stage. If you have twelve minutes, here is what happened:



Jensen chose the song “Who You Are” by Jessie J. The lyrics, and the way she delivered them, are haunting when you know her story (more on that in a minute):

I stare at my reflection in the mirror:
“Why am I doing this to myself?”
Losing my mind on a tiny error,
I nearly left the real me on the shelf.
No, no, no, no, no...

Don’t lose who you are in the blur of the stars!
Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing,
It’s okay not to be okay.
Sometimes it’s hard to follow your heart.
Tears don’t mean you’re losing, everybody’s bruising,
Just be true to who you are!

I did a little digging to find out the story behind the bullying Jillian endured. I found a website she started called Overcoming Bullying on which she shares her story about her first day in middle school when a classmate tried to sell her drugs and she turned him in. She was no longer known as Jillian. Instead they called her snitch.

She says other rumors, which were not true, spread throughout the school. She began crying herself to sleep every night while attempting to hide her torment from her parents. She was embarrassed and didn’t know what to do. “How I wish that I would’ve had someone like myself to talk to about everything that KNEW exactly how I felt,” she says on her website.

The bullying led to her “hurting herself.” Cutting, probably. Words and music were her only true refuge. But as you watched her X Factor audition, you got the feeling her refuge had not led to healing. It protected her, allowed her to survive and gave her a safe place to create. But she still needed someone to touch her wounds with a warm and tender hand.

The audience did that when they made the heart symbol with their hands and swayed back and forth to her song. Demi Lovato did that when she left her judge’s chair and embraced Jillian onstage. The other judges did that by the compassion they showed her.

And the power of the human touch began its healing work.

“I feel like I can just push away those ... those ... those terrible things and really just go on and do what I want to do, and really be happy and not think about it anymore,” Jillian said after the audition.

Maybe if we stopped trying to offer so much advice, solutions and cures, and instead touched more wounds, as Nouwen suggests, we could see real healing

Why Going Positive is Inspiring

Don't tell me how bad the other guy's
mountain is ... inspire me to reach
new heights on your mountain.
Photo: Cristian Bortes

Most of us say we are tired of political candidates who go negative. We say we would rather hear about what they want to do, not what they say their opponents want to do. “Give us substance,” we say. “Give us a reason to vote for you rather than against somebody else.”

I’m in that camp.

But why stop with politicians? Aren’t they just doing what so many businesses do?

Here in Omaha, Cox Communications routinely runs a commercial that shows a family with DirecTV attempting to watch television, but are unable to do so because of a storm. The ad shows a fuzzy screen and a frustrated family, and it ends with this voice over: Really? Satellite TV? In Nebraska? [Our weather is all over the place.]

And conversely, DirecTV runs commercials showing depressed men who won’t be able to watch their favorite football teams because they have cable. But if they had DirecTV, and $200.00 for the NFL Sunday Ticket, then all of their football watching dreams would come true.

Wendy’s is running a commercial in which Wendy Thomas is touting the “Wendy’s Way,” saying, in part, “Some places use beef that travels halfway around the world. Frozen. On a cargo ship. Not Wendy’s.”



A commercial for Advil PM starts with a man saying, “I’m doing my own sleep study. Advil PM or Tylenol PM?” The commercial shows two men in a room – each covered in a blanket with the names of the respective medications. “The Advil PM guy is spending less time lying awake with annoying aches and pains, and more time asleep,” continues the man who is supposedly doing a sleep study. The actor under the Tylenol PM blanket grabs his shoulder and rubs it while the Advil PM actor is crashed.

Contrast those commercials with this one from Brawny:



I’m not inspired by Cox’s running down of DirecTV (even though their negativity is true – storms do disrupt my DirecTV service) or vice versa. I’m also not going to rush out to buy a burger from Wendy’s or a package of Advil PM based on their commercials. All of these ads are self-serving, at best. But the next time I’m at the store, there’s a good chance I’ll buy Brawny paper towels.

Remembering Phyllis Diller

Photo: Public domain

Phyllis Diller always reminded me of the woman in the neighborhood who never changed out of her nightgown but still roamed around in her yard, talking to passersby as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Every neighborhood has one.

It’s beautiful to live that way.

When I heard that Diller passed away yesterday, at the age of 95, four memories of her came flooding back – her crazy hair, her unique laugh, her self-deprecating humor, and that long cigarette holder she waved around during her routines.

As a boy, my mom took my sister and me to my grandma’s on Saturdays. All of us headed to Kmart where I ended up with a cherry Icee with one of those famous bubble top lids, or a milk carton full of chocolate malted milk balls. Saturdays were glorious as a result.

After the shopping was complete, we went back to grandma’s where she would cook a meal (the best pot roast in history, potatoes and green beans) before we settled in to watch the Carol Burnett Show and other variety shows.

I was too young to remember any of the bits specifically, but I do remember Burnett’s signature ear tug, Tim Conway’s portrayal of a character named Dorf, Flip Wilson dressing up like a woman, and Diller making fun of herself as she appeared on these various shows. Of course, that was the same era in which Johnny Carson was the master of late night television.

It was a golden era of comedy and it became part of who we were as a culture.

If I got out of bed with crazy hair and failed to comb it, Mom was sure to say something like, “You have Phyllis Diller hair.” If somebody did something wrong, he or she would invoke Flip Wilson theology and say, “The devil made me do it!” Conway’s “Dorf on Golf” became a video that was a connecting point between my dad and me.

We can never go back, and that is probably not a bad thing. Oh, it would be nice to experience good, relatively clean humor like the old guard used to produce. But we have Bill Cosby, Jeff Foxworthy, Mark Lowry and others. The thing is, a good comedian knows herself and the culture she lives well enough to find humor in the mundane of that era, so every generation needs to produce new comedians.

Every generation needs a Phyllis Diller, a Johnny Carson, a Bob Hope, a Lucille Ball, a Tim Conway, a Flip Wilson or a Carol Burnett. We were just fortunate enough to have all of them at the same time.

*****

I’ve been combing through YouTube videos this morning looking for some gems of Diller in action. This seems like a perfect one to share with you – it’s from the Ed Sullivan Show in October, 1969:

Yellow Tail Sweet Red Roo Wine

My cat Latte, posing with a bottle of
Yellow Tail Sweet Red Roo

I poured a glass of Yellow Tail Sweet Red Roo wine to enjoy with an episode of Friday Night Lights (FNL) from Season 3 called, “How the Other Half Lives,” which seemed fitting, given that I was drinking a bottle of wine that only cost $5.99.

I’m working my way through FNL for the second time and I’m realizing, as I always do when I see a movie or television series for the second time, that I missed so much the first time.

I don’t remember Landry and Tyra breaking up before the season started, and I certainly don’t remember either character not giving a reason, but it feels totally unsatisfying. As viewers, we’ve been through too much with them without being given an explanation for their break up.

I don’t remember Lyla completely abandoning her newfound Christian faith from Season 2 without any explanation. She simply slips back into her old ways without any apparent thought or struggle. That’s disconcerting and it leaves viewers wondering who she is and what she believes.

In fairness to the show, Season 2 was supposed to be longer, but it was cut short. So, at the beginning of Season 3, the writers were left to fill in the gaps. Unfortunately, they didn’t do it well enough to be convincing.

As a viewer who is willing to get lost in the fictional world of Dillon, Texas, I am being jarred out of that world, wondering why the writers didn’t create enough convincing backstory before moving on.

As I sipped my glass of Yellow Tail Sweet Red Roo wine, it tasted a lot like the unsatisfying gaps between Seasons 2 and 3 of FNL. Something just seemed off.

Yellow Tail had good intentions, trying to capture a piece of the growing market that favors red wine. According to Nielsen data, “the sweet wine category has seen a 246 percent increase in dollar value sales in 2011 versus the previous year and IRI Syndicated reported more than half a million cases of sweet red wine were sold in the U.S. in 2011.”

The problem is the back of the bottle doesn’t tell the entire story. Yellow Tail packaging says the wine’s flavors are “sweet red berries, vanilla & chocolate.” With the first sip, I knew it was a blended wine. My mouth was confused though. The back of the bottle did not mention any blends. But the wine was both sweet and dry.

That sent me to Google where I learned that it is a blend of “Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, and other red varietals.” I’m not a wine expert. I don’t even play one on the Internet. But why in the world would someone who wants a sweet red wine want a blend that includes dry wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz?

Maybe this wine is for real wine drinkers and that’s why I don’t like it. But if it is supposed to be sweet, then it needs to be sweet.

Misguided Notions and the Death of Dreams

Photo: Marcin Wichary

I enjoy watching TV shows like American Idol and The X Factor. Music is medicine for the soul and seeing an obscure artist get his or her big shot on shows like these is satisfying. It’s the perfect mixture of talent, hard work and opportunity – much like any other successful endeavor in life. But sometimes contestants lose perspective.

Tim Cifers is the perfect example. He’s a 30-year-old sales manager who loves to sing country music. He made it to the final 32 on The X Factor USA recently and before he performed for the chance to move to the final 16 (and a shot to perform live), he made these comments:

“I’m just your everyday country guy. I live the same life every day – just in and out – working at my job, but my dream is not to sell beer every day for a living. My dream is to perform in front of huge audiences and give my family the life they deserve. I don’t want to give music up. I don’t want to fail at having my dream come true.

“My family at home is just so supportive. You know, I want to make them proud too. So, this is a big step. If I got a no today, it would just mean going back home and going back to work and it would almost be like everything’s gone out the window. This is my one shot. I can’t quit my job because I’ve got to put food on that table and I’ve got to support my family. This decision determines the rest of my life.”



Cifers’ perspective is off in so many areas.

First, his dream to perform in front of huge audiences so he can give his family the life they deserve sounds noble. But true artists have something to say and when their talent and hard work meet opportunity, sometimes they get to share their message with huge crowds – not the other way around.

Second, he’s 30 years old. He doesn’t have to give up music. If he loves it, he can continue to pursue it while he’s earning a living selling beer to support his family.

Third, receiving a no – which did happen, by the way – is not failure. Failure in this case would be quitting an activity he loves.

Fourth, healthy families are not proud of one another based on success, but rather, they are proud of one another when they do the right thing. Cifers is providing for his family. That’s something to be proud of. The fact that he chased a dream on The X Factor is something to be cheered by his family, but receiving a no in the round of 32 shouldn’t, and presumably, won’t change how proud they are of him.

Fifth, going back home and going back to work isn’t a death sentence. Work is noble. And it’s almost as if he believes being a recording artist isn’t going to be “work,” or even monotonous at times.

Sixth, he can’t definitively say this is his one shot. It may indeed have been his biggest and best shot. But there’s another contestant in the competition who is 60. He understands what one (last) shot means.

As contestant after contestant on these shows say similar things, it makes me wonder what our kids are thinking as they watch. Are their parents correcting these misguided notions? I hope so. But I can’t help but wonder about the kids whose idea of success is being shaped by these contestants. Are they going to miss the fact that sometimes the death of a dream provides fertile ground for a new dream to be born?

The Dodge Journey

Anytime you can advertise a product and make somebody want to blog about it, even going so far as to embed the commercial, you probably need to give your marketing team a raise. The Dodge Journey is one of those products.

I've never driven one. Probably never will. But I could watch the commercial over and over. I think there are several variations of it, but the one below works because it contains these lines, "People don't make a list of websites they want to see before they die. They don't fill photo albums with pictures from an online search. Like being there, is not like being there. It's okay, the Internet will be just fine without you."



The ironic thing about this commercial is, Dodge is using the Internet to sell the Journey. Dodge uploaded the commercial you see above to YouTube and it has been viewed by more than 300,000 people. According to the video's description, Dodge left three Journeys somewhere out there for us to find. If we find one, it is ours. And the commercial says the Internet "might help you figure out where they might be."

Irony aside, this campaign is brilliant because it taps into something we know to be true. Life isn't nearly as memorable when there is a lack of adventure. All of us might define adventure differently, but I'm guessing we can all agree that as fun as Angry Birds might be to play, nobody will look back while on his deathbed and wish he had played it even more.

But visiting a pumpkin patch once a year, going to an Apple festival, taking in an art exhibit, joining a tennis league or book club, spending a Saturday at the lake with friends, traveling down Route 66 with a loved one, with stops in small cafes and gift shops, these are the moments we will, as the commercial says, fill our photo albums with -- even if they are digital photo albums.

Coping with Surrender

I've been thinking about a scene from the TV show Parenthood. It's from the episode, "Hey, If You're Not Using that Baby" that aired this past week. Kristina, the mother of a child named Max who has Asperger's syndrome, is meeting with his teacher after she and her husband have decided to "mainstream" him by putting him in a regular school.

Kristina is concerned that Max isn't going to fit it. Her fears are confirmed the first time she sees Max sitting by himself on the playground, so she begins emailing Max's teacher about her concerns. When the teacher doesn't respond quickly, Kristina decides to visit the school. That's the scene you will see below.



"You're just going to have to get a little more comfortable with having less control," Max's teacher says. That's the line that sticks in my head. It seems to be an "aha" moment for Kristina who has understandably spent most of Max's life trying to control his environment. But the truth is, she's not always going to be there for Max. He's eventually going to finish his education, get a job, maybe get married and have kids of his own.

Along that journey, he's going to be ostracized sometimes. He's not always going to fit in. But in reality, how many of us fit in in all social settings? Certainly Max is going to face bigger social challenges than many of us, but he's going to be better prepared for them if Kristina can get a little more comfortable with having less control now.

Max's teacher wasn't advocating being at ease with having no control. Instead, she spoke about increments -- about getting "a little more comfortable" with having "less control."

Life is about adjusting in increments. I think that's what Kristina heard from Max's teacher. She doesn't have to stop trying to protect her son. She just needs to loosen the reigns a little to see what happens next.

The X Factor Series Premiere

Photo: Ethan Hickerson

Did you watch the premiere of X Factor USA on Wednesday night? It certainly had some moving moments. It had some bizarre ones too. I like the fact that nearly all ages can compete, and having live auditions in front of such a huge audience was a nice twist.

The only real negative for me was a lack of diverse musical styles. Nearly every contestant who got on the air was either into pop or R&B. Hopefully we’ll get to hear some rock and country mixed in as the auditions continue.

Here are a few thoughts about the contestants:

Rachel Crow: Loved her. Loved her personality. At 13, she brought down the house with her rendition of “Mercy.”

Terrell Carter: Dude can sing. I think he’ll go far in the competition.

John Lindahl: Plenty of personality. Great stage presence. Not sure he has the voice, but time will tell.

Siameze Floyd: If this were a celebrity impersonation competition, he would win. He’s Prince, minus the voice. He can dance and move, but that’s where it ends. Can’t believe they put him through.

Dan and Venita: He is 70. She is 83. They are married and make a beautiful couple. I loved the way Dan kept reaching out to touch Venita’s hand during “Unchained Melody.” Unfortunately, they just couldn’t sing.

You Only Live Once: My cat nearly jumped off my lap when one of the girls started doing her death metal scream. And the stunned look on Simon’s face was hysterical. “It was like you were singing,” he said to one of them, “and she swallowed poison,” he said to the death metal girl. I was hoping they would put them through just to see how they would follow that performance.

Linda Ostrofsky: A 61-year old screaming “I Touch Myself”? Come on. There is no way in the world this was a legitimate audition. This had to be a gag, a dare or a hoax.

Miranda Singleton: She said she wants to be the next Madonna. She sort of had Madonna’s look down, but the voice … not so much.

Simone Battle: She likes the word, “fierce,” which to her means confidence and exhibiting fearlessness. She had plenty of that, but she relied mostly on tight red shorts. My problem with her was her voice, which wasn’t all that hot in my opinion. She just seemed more concerned with her dream of “becoming a pop icon,” than with actually wanting a platform to say something of substance through her music. But she’s through to the next round. So, we’ll see. The one thing that resulted from her audition is – Simon and L.A. Reid aren’t afraid to disagree and they did so often.

Stacy Francis: A 42-year-old, single mother of two who says she doesn’t want to die with the music in her. Even before I heard her sing, I was rooting for her. She killed it during her audition, singing “Natural Woman,” bringing everybody to their feet, including the judges. I loved her “Wooooo” at the end.

Geo Godley: A 43-year-old “internet blogger,” as if there were another kind. I’m not even going to get into this guy’s audition. Let’s just say he disrobed. Another farce. There’s no way this was a legit audition. He’s just a guy looking for his 15 minutes, and he got it thanks to the show’s bad decision to air his audition.

Marcus Canty: A 20-year old guy who loves life and watching kids at his church. His mom told him he has two years to make a go of his singing career. He was at the end of his two years when he took the stage. I wasn’t as blown away with him as the judges were, but he can certainly sing. He’ll be fun to watch.

The Answer: Not my kind of music, but they are good.

Nici Collins: Can’t sing a lick and she made weird screeching noises. And again, I just can’t imagine this was legit.

T for Two: No. No. No.

Darren Michaels: Attempted to sing “Like a Virgin,” but didn’t come anywhere close to singing.

Chris Rene: Another contestant with a compelling story. He got into drugs and alcohol at an early age, has a two-year old son, hauls trash for a living and he has a dream. He sang an original hip-hop song called “Young Homie,” which was filled with hope. He says he’s been clean for 70 days and knowing his backstory made the song even better. Loved what Simon told him: “Maybe you need the show, maybe we need you.”

What do you think about the premiere?

Spoiler-Alert Police

This is how I felt when I saw a score I didn't want to see
(Photo: Casey Fleser)

Mary McNamara, a Los Angeles Times television critic, wrote a column recently about spoiler alerts. In it, she says endings are just as important as beginnings and as such are fair game for commentary and opinion without the critic being slapped around by the spoiler-alert police. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with her throughout the column.

Here's an example:

The Internet has created a new genre of re-cap commentary, in which every episode of a show is parsed for later-that-night consumption and season finales are regularly reviewed while the end credits are still rolling. Twitter is even more insidious — people don't even have to take the time to think of a catchy lead or transitional phrase before they blast off crucial "Can you believe???" information. Meanwhile, the DVR, Netflix and other forms of delayed content delivery gave birth to a generation people who are not about to schedule their lives around some TV show. Not even a Really Important episode that they don't want spoiled. 

The irony is, many of these do-it-yourself programmers are also heavy Internet and Twitter users who don't appreciate having to forgo their high-speed pleasures to preserve the mysteries of their TV dawdling.

I'm one of those people who are not about to schedule my life around a TV show so I use my DVR and Netflix to catch up on programs I want to see, when I want to see them. But I'm also a "heavy Internet and Twitter" user and that definitely creates problems. But I know when to go dark and when not to so I can usually avoid spoilers.

But this past weekend, I watched a NASCAR race at a friend's house and then we engaged in a little one-on-one NCAA 2012 football battle on PS3. The game uses ESPN's brand, complete with the scrolling scoreboard at the bottom – and the scores are real-time. You know what happened next, the video game scrolled the score of one of the sporting events I recorded. I'm not a fan of the scrolling scoreboard on my TV. I'm even less of a fan of it on a video game.

I guess I'm advocating for even more personal control. If I want to hide a scrolling scoreboard, I should be able to. If I want to hide someone I follow on Twitter for a few hours, I should be able to.
Anyway, I understand her point, but I think it's possible, or at least it should be possible, to both determine my own TV watching schedule while also being engaged on social media.

Back to the column …

One critic of my acquaintance (OK, it's me) was recently chided on two occasions for, among many other things, writing about season finales that had aired several days and, in one case, several weeks previously. 

Weeks.

I wouldn't complain about either instance. Several days is ample time. But I really take issue with this statement: 

Or, more recently, over the hectic response to the "Lost" finale? No, they did not. Because the people who cared about the shows watched the shows in real time, and the ones who didn't were too embarrassed to admit it.

Saying a person who cares about a show watches it in real time (implying a person who chooses to record a program and watch it later doesn't really care) is a bizarre statement to make. It implies that I will forgo meeting a friend at a coffee shop on a Monday night because "Men of a Certain Age" is on TV. Is she really saying, "If you really care about 'Men of a Certain Age' you will forget about your real life friends so you can watch a TV show about friendship?" 

And if her statement is true, why would anybody have a DVR box? Why would Netflix carry TV series? Why are TV series even offered on DVD?

Men of a Certain Age – Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Photo: Danny Feld

TNT sent me an advance copy of the final six episodes of season two of “Men of a Certain Age” and I’m blogging my way through them. 

As I expected, Manfro finally finds out Joe has been cutting in on his bookie business and he’s not happy. I don’t know if it’ll cost Joe Manfro’s friendship, but it cost him a tooth. Terry takes him to a dentist, where Joe bumps into an old flame named Dory – yet another failure in Joe’s life that he tries to ignore.

After the dentist reinserts Joe’s tooth, Dory tracks Joe down by the elevator.

“I should’ve at least given you an explanation,” Dory says. She looks at the elevator button because she can’t look him in the eye. She’s struggling. You get the feeling she cares more about Joe than he realizes. “It’s just, when you told me about that big bet you made …”

“Hey, you saw what you saw,” Joe says. He’s still clueless. “It was scary.”

“No … I had to break it off, but I just want you to know,” she says, “it wasn’t some little thing … meeting you.”

He finally gets it – by it, I don’t just mean Dory’s feelings for him, though, that’s part of it. But he finally understands what a mess he’s made of his life – often at the expense of others.

Now it’s his turn to look down.

“Ah, I screwed up so many things,” he says.

Dory lets five seconds pass. She seems to be debating whether she should pile on or offer him an olive branch.

She makes a decision, and it’s a beautiful one.

“Hey,” she says, “don’t let bad Joe win, okay? Cuz good Joe’s kinda awesome.”

Men of a Certain Age – Can’t Let That Slide

TNT sent me an advance copy of the final six episodes of season two of “Men of a Certain Age” and I’m blogging my way through them. I’ve been attempting to do summaries of episodes and to be honest, that’s not my thing. I’m more of a pick a scene that moves me kind of guy and write about that. So, from here on out, that’s the plan with this series.

Ray Romano plays Joe in
"Men of a Certain Age"
Photo: Danny Feld

Over the past couple of episodes, Joe’s bookie, Manfro, has been going through chemotherapy. He asked Joe to pick up money from a bettor and that plunged Joe back into his old gambling habit – but this time, he’s cutting in on Manfro’s action while he’s sick.

Joe gets in even deeper during this episode, which airs tonight on TNT at 10:00 pm Eastern, 9:00 pm Central. He takes a large bet from a man named Marty who can’t afford to pay after he loses. Joe walks into Marty’s place of employment, an electronics store, and applies the heat, hoping the man will crack and somehow come up with the money.

“Listen George,” Marty says to Joe, who is using a pseudonym, “I’m kind of going through a whole thing right now, okay?” He’s unshaven, fidgety, desperate. “So, I don’t know ... I guess it all kind of got away from me.”

Joe stares at Marty as he pleads his case, seeing himself and not liking what he sees.

“Look I just needed to hit this one time,” Marty says, “Just one more stupid time and I would be out of this stupid hole that I’m in now.”

Joe continues to stare.

“My wife left and she took the kids and I’m staying in this piece of s**t apartment,” Marty continues. “My kids are seven and eight. I feel like a total a**hole. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t have it. I don’t have it. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say man ... I’m sorry... I don’t have ...”

And there it is – Marty has just described the exact same situation Joe went through as a result of his own gambling problems.

“It’s okay,” Joe says. “Yeah, it’s okay ...” He turns around and walks out.

Self deception isn’t all that difficult, but when somebody else we know demonstrates the same faults or poor decisions we’ve made, then it becomes much more difficult. As I watched it unfold, I felt for both men and I felt for their families who were torn apart.

The damage won’t end there. When Manfro finds out Joe has been taking advantage of him while he’s been going through chemo, that friendship is bound to end. Although, if Manfro was really thinking the way a friend should, he would have never put Joe in the position he did to begin with.

Brokenness tends to breed brokenness though. One bad decision leads to another one, and so it goes, until someone or something wakes a person up. Maybe this will be the wakeup call Joe needs. I hope so. But the fallout is still going to be ugly.

Men of a Certain Age: The Pickup

Terry's life is a mess
(Photo: Danny Feld)

TNT sent me an advance copy of the final six episodes of season two and I’m blogging my way through them. This is the second in a series of six posts. This episode, The Pickup, airs tonight on TNT at 10:00 pm (Eastern) / 9:00 pm (Central).

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Joe says to his teaching pro after a shot goes astray off his club. “Last week, I was hitting it really solid.”

The golf pro looks at him with his eyebrows arched and left hand covering his chin. It’s a look that says, “Joe, you’ve given this a good shot, but you just don’t have it.” The pro closes his eyes and searches for the right thing to say. Instead, he tells Joe to try his 8-iron, which Joe shanks way left of his target. The pro continues to say nothing with his mouth, but everything with his eyes.

Joe’s dream of making the Senior Golf Tour is slipping away. He has responsibilities that keep him from practicing and he feels like his dream may be over when his teaching pro tells him he might need somebody else to coach him. It’s enough to drive Joe back into an old pattern, which is heartbreaking to see, but also understandable given that most of us look for an escape when life gets difficult. Unfortunately for Joe, some forms of escape are more harmful than others.

Terry is a mess in this episode. Since Erin broke up with him, he can’t find the motivation to get to work on time or do anything else he is supposed to. Like Joe, he too falls back into old patterns. Owen has it all together though and he has one of his finest moments since the show began as he pulls Terry into his office and calls him on his lack of maturity.

“Do you think you’re the only one here with problems – other s**t to worry about?” Owen says. “We all got problems and you just created a damn big one for me. I have the opportunity here to actually do something with this place – to bring it back from the dead – and you just chased my best salesman out the door, along with 25 sales. So you’re not going anywhere. You dug this big a** hole and you’re going to fill it up.

“Go clean yourself up and be back in here, at 7:00 [am] with a tie. And ah … grow up.”

How’s that for drama?

*****

Links of Interest:

• Men of a Certain Age: The Great Escape
• Interview with Men of a Certain Age co-creator Mike Royce

What If ...?

Photo: Marco Bellucci

Did you ever see the episode of Yes, Dear in which Jimmy pursues his dream of working as an umpire after his wife Christine decides it’s time she pushed him in that direction the same way he pushed her to go back to college? Back in high school, she told him it was a stupid idea, but she wants to see him happy, so she encourages him to give it a shot.

Jimmy’s first game as an ump is a disaster. He makes the wrong calls – or no call at all. Players, managers and fans give him the business. And he returns home dejected. He tells Christine he hated the experience because there was too much pressure and no matter which call he made, somebody was mad at him. Christine feels better knowing she didn’t squash his dream.

“Yeah well, I’m glad you feel better,” Jimmy says, “but I lost my what if.”

“Your what?”

“My what if. Whenever I was bored at work or stuck in traffic I’d like to kind of sit and think about what my life would’ve been like if I’d a been an umpire. Now I know I never could’ve done it.”

He finds a new what if when Christine suggests he could be a pro golfer on the senior tour if he practiced every day until he was 50, but since she would never allow it, he’d never have to deal with the possibility of failing.

It’s a twisted way of viewing life, but probably not all that far from the truth. We all need what ifs.

The second I heard Jimmy use the “what if” phrase, I thought about the various “what ifs?” in my own life. In high school and college I used to wonder, “What if I practiced tennis every day, and got in great shape, and developed a better backhand?”

After college I wondered, “What if I practiced guitar every day and transitioned from power chords to learning the nuances of playing individual notes in a key that captures the mood of a song I’d written?”

In more recent years I’ve wondered, “What if I studied fiction writing techniques and was able to use what I learned to write a novel that spoke to people?”

For most of my life I’ve wondered, “What if I finally found someone to love – someone I could pour my life into?”

My first what if was answered when I couldn’t advance deep into tennis tournaments I entered. My second what if was answered after I became a Christian and put my guitar down – which, in hindsight, wasn’t my best decision. My third what if still lingers. I still dream about writing a novel that moves people. And my fourth what if – the one about finding love – it does more than linger. It gives me hope for the future – at least in an earthly sense.

What are your past and present what ifs? How and why have they changed over the years?

Men of a Certain Age: The Great Escape

Scott Bakula (Terry), Ray Romano (Joe) and
Andre Braugher (Owen)
(Photo Credit:  Danny Feld)

“Men of a Certain Age,” starring Ray Romano, Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher returns to the air tonight to begin showing the final six episodes of season two. TNT sent me an advance copy of those episodes and I can’t think of a series I’d rather blog through more than this one. Hope you enjoy it. 

This episode, “The Great Escape,” opens with a series of uncomfortable situations – from Joe’s kids climbing into the car to tell him his ex-wife, Sonia, might be going through “the change,” to Terry bumping into Annie, an old girlfriend whom he refers to as a fling, while he is with Erin, his current girlfriend, to Owen getting a visit from a rival car dealership bigwig who knows more than he should.

One of things I love about this show is, it finds a comfortable balance between characters who are reacting to what is going on around them while at the same time, stumbling through life in a pro-active way, toward their goals.

Joe’s ex isn’t going through the change and when he finds out what she is going through, it peaks his interest in her again. Terry isn’t tempted to go back to Annie, even though that’s what the old Terry would do. Instead he finally allows himself to be vulnerable with a woman and wisely, she gives him the room to begin growing into the man he wants to become. But there’s an obstacle in their way that may be difficult to overcome. And Owen wonders if the offer from his rival might be his ticket out from under his dad’s thumb once and for all.

As usual, this episode contains some great dialogue. There’s one scene, in which Terry cooks dinner for Erin in her apartment and she wonders how he is able to cook so well.

“The secret,” he says, “is to become an actor, and then never get work.”

Erin laughs.

“And then, you know, you’ve got to let that simmer for about 30 years, and that gives you time to develop, you know, all sorts of hobbies – like, you know, cooking.

Erin takes a drink from her wine glass and looks at him as if she both admires his self-deprecation as well as the tenacity he showed to stick with his acting dream for so long. “Unemployment is the key,” she says, playing along.

“Yeah, but, you got to stick to it,” he says.

They get interrupted by Erin’s cat, Ted – an orange tabby who rubs up against Terry’s leg, which probably paints an even clearer picture of what domesticated life might look like if he continues along this path with Erin, but that turns out to be the least of his worries.

Given that five episodes remain in the season, there isn’t a lot of resolution to any of these conflicts in this episode. Instead, we encounter real middle aged characters who still don’t have all the answers. From the outside, they look tragically flawed. But once you get to know them, they look beautifully flawed.

If you missed my interview with "Men of a Certain Age" co-creator Mike Royce back in January, here's a link.