Cathie, Jes and I watched the movie Thirteen on Saturday. Good movie, but very disturbing from a parent's perspective and from a youth pastor's perspective. The movie was about a thirteen year old seventh grader in a single parent home outside of LA. Throughout the movie, you see a girl who wants to be accepted by cool kids, and ends up being systematically being dragged into drugs, shoplifting, sex and rebellion against her Mom. I was really uncomfortable while I was watching it. I kept thinking of my kids, and the kids in Fusion, wanting to save them, save this girl from what's going on. It's a movie that I'd reccomend for some parents to watch with their kids - and talk about at the end. There's some great teaching moments out of the movie. It does a great job showing the consequences and the gradual slide of someone based on a few bad decisions.
One of the girls who wrote this was, Nikki Reed, was thirteen at the time.

Since Alias wasn't on last night, Cathie and i watched The Surreal Life last night. If you haven't watched the show yet, it consists of Vanilla Ice, Tammy Faye Baker, Erik Estrada (Ponch) and Porn Star Ron Jeremy. The whole cast came in expecting Tammy Faye to spend most of the time preaching at them, but instead, she's done nothing but love them in a non-judgemental way. The whole cast went to her book signing, which consisted largely or fundamentalist fans, transvestites, gays and lesbians. The crowd geniunely loved her and it showed based on how she connected, loved and communicated with them. The clip ended with Vanilla Ice talking about how he expected something so different from a Christian, but instead saw someone who was so loving and caring - blew him out of the water. Erik Estrada and the others had the same kind of feedbcak. The group proceeded back to the house where Ron Jeremy had invited over a bunch of his Porn Star friends, who she talked with, hung out with, and headed inside once they started taking off their clothes.