Anyone catch Frontline on PBS Tuesday night? The program was called "Growing Up Online" and investigated the internet experience of teenagers and their clueless parents.

The good news is that the Cyber Predator out to kidnap your 14 year old daughter is an urban myth. Not that there aren't plenty of dirty old men online looking to hook up with hot teen aged girls. As I've always suspected, the kids recognize the forty-somethings masquerading as teens and delete their messages. The only response these guys get are from the producers of "Datline--To Catch A Predator."

But the bad news is that this is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. Which is odd for me, because although I'm old enough to be a grandmother, I'm online more than my daughter. I know my way around the internet. I have a website, I belong to a number of  writers' networks and forums, I did most of my Christmas shopping online and I download MP3s.  If this is the gap, it would be the same as if my 82 year old mother went to Woodstock or a was Dead Head for the summer of 1967.

I see the internet as an amazingly huge shopping mall that goes on forever. There are great big stores (like amazon.com) and weird little boutiques and lots of places for people to talk and hang out. It's a fun place to visit and you can be whoever you want to be online.  There's a dark side too, like the porn and the hate mongers and the people who want to show you how to do things you really shouldn't be doing. You don't want your kid going through this place without guidance.

I think a lot of teens forget that this wonderful shopping mall is a public place. Far more public than the brick and mortar mall down the road. Because hundreds of millions of people go there. People from all over the world can view your myspace page. So can your high school principal, your parents, your girlfriend, the recruiter at your first choice college and prospective employers.

I have explained to my daughter that she should have no expectation of privacy when she goes online. I have the right to look over her shoulder and read whatever it is she's writing or viewing. (And I know what POS means). I've also explained to her that when she does get a myspace page, even though it will be private, she should keep in mind that all the people I mentioned earlier--the parents, the prinicpal, the college recruiters--could eventually see it.

But it was Cyber-bullying that was the biggest problem for teens. Instant messages and myspace postings, kids saying things to each online that they would never do face to face. I talked to my daughter about that, and we have a strategy for how to handle it. If she becomes the victim of cyber bullying, she says she'll delete the messages, turn off the computer and go read a book.

Or even talk to her aged, though moderately tech-savvy mom.

Posted by judy5cents at 8:13 AM EST

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Last weekend our neighbors had a yard sale. Yesterday, while walking the dog past their house, I saw the leavings piled hapharzardly on the driveway, presumably headed for the Salvation Army or the local landfill.

With a pang of yearning, I noticed that tied to the back of a pickup truck was my heart's desire--a Mediterranean style console color television. Maybe it was an RCA (the most trusted name in electronics) or maybe it was a Zenith (the quality goes in before the name goes on). But forty some years ago, that baby was special and it most certainly put somebody back quite a few bucks.

I wanted a color television more than anything in the world when I was 11. It would have been heaven on earth to be able to watch Star Trek in color every Friday, instead of going to my grandparents' house to watch it on their color TV.  Despite my relentless pleas, my mother would not budge. We did not need a color television.

Now I live in a house where there are three color televisions. Also a number of things that weren't even available for home use in 1967, computers, video games and digital cameras. We live in a wonderfully egalitarian society now. Everyone has color TV.

You wait long enough and whatever it is you want is yours. For example, I drive a 1984 Nissan 300ZX, a truly hot car in 1984 and I would have loved to have had it then, when I was hot myself. (I was a damn fine looking woman when I was 28). Now In 2006, it's just another old car and I'm just another not quite old (but getting there) woman driving it. The 300ZX is a bit of a rarity, and it still retains a degree of its bitchin' allure, but, like me,  it's nowhere near what it used to be.

So when my daughter begs me for some gadget that's totally hot and all the cool kids have one, I think of the color television on the pickup and assure her that whatever it is, she will certainly own one in forty years. Or maybe even less.

Posted by judy5cents at 12:15 PM EST

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I'm about to offend a few political sensibilities, here. I do no support the Writer's Guild Strike.

Although these days, the meaning of the word "support" has been stretched pretty thin. Instead of providing material goods or money (as in child support or supporting your family) it has come to mean nothing more than having vague positive thoughts about a group of people or an issue, as in "Suport The Troops" or "I support the war in Iraq."  Support is just attaching a sticker to the bumper of your car.

So why all the fuss over the writers' strike? I know members of the Writers' Guild want a piece of the internet pie and for what it's worth, I believe they are entitled to it. Everyone should be able to make money from their own creations.

And yes, I also know that we are now getting re-runs and reality shows on television and there could possibly be no three hour Oscar Award show next month (and this is a bad thing because...?) And yes, I am even aware of the fact that thousands of hard working people who make their living off of the entertainment business are out of work and strapped for cash.

Last night, while watching the lead-up to what was left of the Golden Globe Awards show, my husband suggested that the writers should be treated like the striking air traffic controllers in 1980. Then President Ronald Reagan fired them all and brought in a whole crop of brand new workers to do their jobs. It was a huge blow to organized labor and plenty of dire preditictions were made. And yet, more than a quarter of a century later, we can look back and see that those people were not irreplaceable. As far as I remember, there were no plane crashes attributed to inexperienced controllers and things went back to normal. Or as normal as things can get in the airline industry.

There's no shortage of writing talent in this country. I'm sure the studios and the producers could find plenty of good writers out there who'd much rather make a very good living writing sitcoms as opposed to scrounging about for publication in any medium while they toil away at their boring day jobs.

But what about the stars who refuse to cross the picket lines?

My husband had an answer for that, too. Get new ones. There are plenty of attractive, talented actors out there who could take over. Movies and television shows might be more interesting without the distraction of the Brad Pitts and the Nicole Kidmans and the Sally Fields.

It is, after all, just television and movies. Unlike the air traffic controllers, there's no possibility of a plane crashing because an inexperienced writer came up with a bad joke for Jay Leno's monologue.

As for all those people put of work because of the strike, all I can say is that economic shit like that happens.  The entertainment industry is just that, an industry. And we all know industries can go bust, like the auto industry in Detroit and the steel industry in Allentown, PA and the textile industry here in North Carolina. You have to adapt to change.

I'm quite sure some kind of resolution will come about eventually. In the meantime, my family and I have decided to entertain ourselves by talking to each other. And maybe we'll find we don't need to watch television.

Posted by judy5cents at 9:58 AM EST

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I'm a bit late to the table as far as seeing Pirates of The Caribbean, World's End. I know it came out last summer but I passed on seeing it when it was in the theatres, Based on the reviews saying it was long and hard to follow, I figured it wasn't that it wasn't worth sitting through the nearly 3 hour runtime just for the few minutes that Keith Richards is on screen.

However, I let my daughter go see it with her friends. I didn't see any problem, she'd seen the previous installments and when reviews said it was "grim," I figured if she could handle the Harry Potter films, she could handle this one. She came back saying it was all right, but she liked the other two better and that was it. After seeing it, I realize I should research the movies she sees more carefully. If I knew last summer what I know now, I don't know if I'd let her go.

**spoiler alert**

(Of course, I don't really care if I spoil it for you--if you really were interested in this film, you certainly would have seen it by now)

The opening scene is a mass execution of pirate sympathizers. The condemned prisoners walk in shackles to the gallows, as the govenor announces the island is under martial law and lists the rights that have been revoked: habeus corpus, the right of assembly, the right to a trial by jury.  Anyone found guilty of supporting pirates will be sentenced to hang by the neck until dead.

One of the convicts is a little boy. As he stands beneath the noose, he begins singing a mournful song that we assume to be the Pirate's Anthem. And all the other prisoners join him. A barrel is brought in so the boy can reach the noose.

At this point, I thought something would happen to save the little boy. Maybe Jack Sparrow would come swooping in, reminiscent of Lee Marvin riding up on his white horse to rescue Jane Fonda the final scene of Cat Ballou. But no. In this Walt Disney film, the company known for all around wholesome family entertainment, a little boy is executed. No one saves him.

 I'll say this again. The little boy dies!

Up until that point, I found the whole premise fascinating, given the fact that if you substituted the word "terrorist" or "Al-Quaeda" for "pirate," you got the current policies for the Bush administration. (or at least the ones they'd like to have) And the singing reminded me of that poignant scene in Casablanca, when the supposedly jaded patrons of Rick's American Cafe stand up and sing the French National Anthem in defiance of the Nazis.

I'm not sure what the intention was in portraying the state sanctioned death of a child.  I know that goes on all over the world, and there have even been supreme court cases concerning minors and capital punishment. But this was supposed to be a fun movie. I'm sure there were plenty of parents who found themselves trying to explain to their younger children that the movie wasn't real, and the little boy was just an actor, he wasn't really killed, it was just make-believe.

I felt the same way when I saw Disney's Haunted Mansion, which, like Pirates, was inspired by a Disneyland ride. That movie included a scene where Eddie Murphy's children find themselves in a pool full of gruesome corpses. Those type of scenes scared the bejesus out of me when I was well into my twenties (You should have heard my squeal during Raiders of the Lost Ark).

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm not in favor of censorship, and having to sit through those cloying Disney features of yesteryear is not something I care to do again. (Go rent Pollyanna with Hayley Mills and you'll know what I'm talking about). But even so, I don't like the direction we're heading. There's no one around saying. "Hey, this is violence to a child and not at all appropriate for a film aimed at kids."

So this year, I will resolve to research films more thoroughly before allowing my daughter to see them with her friends. Going by the ratings isn't enough. I take full responsibility for what my daughter sees. I just worry about all those other parents, who look at the PG rating and say "What's the harm?"

Posted by judy5cents at 6:30 AM EST

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George Bailey and The Unknown Unknowns
Current mood: imaginative

So how many times have you seen "It's A Wonderful Life?" I kind of miss the days when it was in the public domain. During the week before Christmas, you could watch back to back showings of it, if you had basic cable and a lot of time on your hands.

It's an interesting concept. For those of you who've been living under rocks for the last 50 some years, Building & Loan owner George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) finds himself comtemplating suicide in the face of 1mounting money problems. Then Clarence, an angel in training, shows him what his town would have been like if he'd never been born. What a difference. Without George, quaint little Bedford Falls becomes a decadent mini-Las Vegas in the snow and everyone he knows is bitter and selfish.

Worst of all, his wife Mary is a (gasp!) librarian! And a spinster to boot. Oh, the horror.

He decides that his life is pretty good and everyone in town shows up at his house with money to pay off Old Man Potter. They all drink eggnog and sing Auld Lang Syne.

In real life there's no such thing. You don't get to live the alternative ending or to go for a ride on the road not taken. What happens, happens and there are no angels showing you how things would have turned out.

Even so, I've been thinking there must have been quite a few never-born George Baileys. Like the George Bailey who designed ballots in Florida for the 2000 presidential election and came up with the one that was so easy to understand, 3000 senior citizens voted for Al Gore instead of Pat Buchannan.

Or the George Bailey who worked at the Texas Book Depository in 1963 and stopped Lee Harvey Oswald as he was getting ready to walk up the stairs and assassinate President Kennedy.

Maybe there could have been a George Bailey who was a senior officer in the FBI who noticed reports that Middle Eastern men taking flying lessons were not at all interested in learning how to take off or land. And then took steps to detain them.

I like to think we are all George Bailey, charged with making a difference in the lives of those we touch and those they touch, right here, right now.

And remember, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings

Posted by judy5cents at 2:28 PM EST

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Mood:  chillin'

Music lost a couple of once-greats this month. Dan Fogelberg died of prostate cancer at the age of 56. His song "Longer" (Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean....I've been in love with you...) was played at millions of weddings in the late 1970s and early 80s. Ask any woman my age, and she'll probably have a memory of slow dancing with that special someone to a soft and squishy Dan Fogelberg song.

And Ike Turner also went to the great band in the sky. Although he was a talented blues guitarist and a rock-and-roll pioneer, he's best known for beating up on his wife Tina, who had the misfortune of becoming far more famous than her husband and went on to write a book and then a movie about her marriage. 

Even though both of these musicians released albums recently (Full Circle by Fogelberg in 2003 and Risin With The Blues  by Turner in 2006), for most of us, they're distant memories, their songs only heard once in a while on the Classic Rock stations, if we happen to be listening at all.

Fame is fleeting and it doesn't take much to become a has-been. Even worse, a tell-all biography by your ex-wife can define forever who and what you are, so much that your obiturary glosses over your many accomplishments, instead focusing on what a jerk you were.

But with the advent of MP3 files, the music can live on forever in your IPod. So you can always relive that cherished memory of dancing with what's-his-name at Homecominge in 1979.

Posted by judy5cents at 11:56 AM EST

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I've been looking forward to seeing the film "The Golden Compass," the fantasy starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel  Craig. I've seen the trailers and it looks like a lot of fun.  It's got a giant talking polar bear wearing body armor and a flying clipper ship. And Sam Elliott looks darn cool.

But wait. This film promotes atheism. It attacks Christianity. It's based on the first book in a trilogy by Phillip Pullman, the man CNN refers to as "a religious skeptic." Roman Catholics and Evengelical Christians say it will hook children into Pullman's books and a dark, individualistic world where all religion is evil. And they'll all become atheists, so don't let your kids see it.

Jiminy, that is one powerful film. Can they come up with one that will convince my daughter to read math books and do her chores?

I have nothing against atheists. I'm married to one. I figure my husband has way more influence over our daughter's beliefs than Phillip Pullman. And that is as it should be.  My husband's beliefs, or lack of them, are just as valid as mine.

As I've said before, I attend a Presbyterian Church in Wilmington. It's small, but with a varied congregation. Some members are Christian fundamentalists, who believe in a literal translation of the bible, some are liberals like me, who see the bible as myth and methaphor, and the rest are in between. But we are all encouraged to explore our beliefs and ask questions.

Atheism is getting a lot of press lately. There are best selling books out like "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," by Christopher Hitchens.  I've read interviews with these men, and it seems to me what they object to is not the religion, but the people in charge. They say religions start wars, religions promote intolerance, religions are judgmental and cruel.

No, it's not the religion doing that, it's evil people using their religion as a convenient excuse to do what they want to do. It's not about God, it's about power.

And despite what you may think, a film starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig has little power over the spiritual journey of your sons and daughters. That is theirs and theirs alone.

Posted by judy5cents at 8:23 AM EST

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Okay, I'm going to hold a little civics lesson here. We all know that the First Amendment to our constitution allows Americans (and everyone else living here) to freely practice the religion of their choice. Or to practice no religion at all if we so desire. Specifically, it ensuress that the government--and that means any government, from the halls of Congress to the municipal offices of  small towns across the country---will not promote or suppress any religion. It's called the anti-establishment clause.

So why is the Governor Sonny Perdueof Georgia praying for rain outside the state Capitol in Atlanta on the taxpayers' dime?  Sure looks like state sanctioned religion to me. He's the governor and he's promoting Christianity.

Now I am not a godless atheist. I go to church. I'm a member of the Persall Memorial Presbyterian in Wilmington. I attend the Christian Insights Adult Sunday School Class and I sing in the choir. And yes, I also tithe.

Governor Perdue is practicing what my pastor calls the vending machine theology of prayer, "prayer in-blessing out." God is not going to make it rain, no matter how strongly we believe in Him or how humbly we make our request. There are a lot of reasons why there's an alarming shortage of water in Georgia, most of them due to human activity.

This is not the first time a governor has tried to pray his way out of a meteorological catastrophe. Back in 1979, when a shortage of heating oil combined with a brutally cold Ohio winter and residents couldn't heat their homes, then Governor Jim Rhodes asked everyone to pray for warmer weather. As I recall, it warmed up eventually (what a miracle!) and extra barrels of heating oil somehow appeared. So I suppose it worked. But then, as now, prayer is not decisive action and when an elected official resorts to it, he doesn't appear statesmanlike, just desperate.

Another example of government sanctioned religion was featured on the PBS show Nova last night. "Judgment Day" recounted how the school board for Dover schools in Pennsylvania insisted that Intelligent Design should be taught in the schools along with the Theory of Evolution. An excellent program and as you would suspect, Science won out over Religion.

I never can understand why so many Christians feel that it's okay to send out death threats to people who don't agree with them. I'm sure there's got to be something in the Bible that says it's a sin to tell someone to fear for his life because you're going to kill him. Seems to me that if it's possible to commit adultery in your heart, it's possible to commit murder.

Religion is personal. It can't be legislated or taught to everyone in the public schools. And God bless the ACLU, protecting my right to go to church and believe in the theory of evolution.

Posted by judy5cents at 7:24 AM EST

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My sister Amy recently came back from a retreat in the Oregon forests, at a resort where the food was all natural vegetarian and Everything was recycled. Even the toilet paper.

Okay, they didn't literally recycle the toilet paper (ewwww!), but it was made of 100% recycled materials. All well and good, but the factory where those rolls of toilet paper were produced was located in Vermont.

That's three thousand miles away.

Although neither of us knew for sure how the toilet paper was transported, it's a safe bet that petroleum products and carbon emissions were involved. It is possible that this Vermont company has a fleet of cyclists furiously pedalling across the country with boxes of toilet paper strapped to their luggage racks, but I'd say the company opted for something a lot quicker and a lot less expensive, like UPS ground transport.

There are trees growing in Oregon and they are a renewable resource. Even though they wouldn't be made of recycled paper, locally made toilet paper would arrive in the bathrooms without the cross country trip.

I recycle. I also use paper towels, which are not on recycled paper. Yes, using cloth towels and rags to clean the kitchen would cut down on landfill waste, but they spread germs unless they are constantly washed. That requires an output of energy. More carbon emissions.

I understand that my niece is using cloth diapers for her newborn son (the most adorable baby in the universe, by the way). I wish her well in that endeavor, but I'm not sure how long she can last. I was going to use cloth diapers with my daughter too, until the first time she took a nap in one. Not only the diaper needed to be changed, but her jammies and the sheets as well. I can see why my mother was so keen to have us all potty trained before we were two.

I suppose a lot my reluctance to be as green as I should be is laziness on my part, along with the feeling that with millions and millions of people using paper towels and plastic bottles and non-recycled toilet paper, giving up my paper towel jones won't make that much difference in the total scheme of things.

But I try to use them sparingly. And maybe someday I will kick the habit.

Posted by judy5cents at 10:12 AM EST

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