{"id":7936,"date":"2004-02-14T23:42:29","date_gmt":"2004-02-14T23:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/saturday_is_entertain_me_day.html"},"modified":"2004-02-14T23:42:29","modified_gmt":"2004-02-14T23:42:29","slug":"saturday_is_entertain_me_day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/saturday_is_entertain_me_day.html","title":{"rendered":"Saturday is Entertain Me Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or at least that’s how it turned out.<\/p>\n

Took Katie to a local production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.<\/a> It was very well done – obviously a fun show to do. I had never seen it before, although I used to have the soundtrack, and knew it rather well. But…now having seen it, I must say I was a little surprised at how absolutely de-Godded it was. Kind of fun, but gosh, what was the point? Without “Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good…” all that’s left is a story about a guy with good luck. Okay, I know. It’s fluff and it’s supposed to be. But I still grumbled.<\/p>\n

Then tonight it was a viewing of Spellbound<\/a>, that wonderful documentary about the National Spelling Bee that Katie and I had seen in the theater, but Michael had not. So I made him watch it, now that it’s out on video. Even the second time around, I found it very moving and complicated, as you watch twelve and thirteen-year olds bear terrific burdens of hope, identity and achievement doing something – spelling words – that seems not worthy of those who look to it to give them a place.<\/p>\n

Finally (yes, one more), we watched American Splendor<\/a>, which I liked for its unique style, what it says about the value of so-called “ordinary life,” art and mortality. If you’ve seen it, see if you agree with me – the most lasting image for me will be Harvey Pekar, battling cancer, trying to articulate to his wife his fear – if I go, will the comic character Harvey Pekar go on, or will he end, too? He’s not just asking about a character. He’s asking about his own existence. Is this the end of me? At some level, that is why creative people do what they do – because they don’t want it to be the end of them, when the end comes.<\/p>\n

(I had actually wanted to get either Lost in Translation<\/strong> or Intolerable Cruelty<\/strong> but our local video fiesta was stripped bare of both, in all formats. )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or at least that’s how it turned out. Took Katie to a local production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was very well done – obviously a fun show to do. I had never seen it before, although I used to have the soundtrack, and knew it rather well. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}