Idol Chatter

What’s the deal with the networks not wanting to show prayers on sports television? What is so bad about athletes trusting in–or at least pursuing–God? After each game, when the fans are filing out of the stadium and the networks are switching to other games, players and coaches from both teams gather near midfield to…

Since the first episode of ABC’s winning new comedy “Ugly Betty,” the conflict has become more and more evident between the family-centered, ethnically diverse life of Betty Suarez–who lives in Queens with Dad, Sis, and Nephew–and the (almost) all-white (both in decor and skin-tone), ultra-materialistic world of Manhattan’s “Mode Magazine,” where Betty works by day.…

We can be waxing sarcastic on the Britney-K-Fed break-up one day, and the next day a totally different story turns the Idol Chatter mood serious and reflective: “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley succumbed to leukemia yesterday at the age of 65. He was one of the big ones, a 26-year award-winning veteran of the journalism…

While combing this morning’s shows for traffic and weather before heading to work, I stumbled onto Matt Lauer on “Today” doing reports on faith, heaven, and religion live from the Holy City of Jerusalem. I was struck by how interesting it was to see such an important topic addressed on the show (which I loved)…

Pedro Almodóvar doesn’t see dead people, but if you tell him that you do, he’ll probably believe it. “I don’t believe that people come from [the afterlife] in a physical way,” the director said when he met with press last month. “But I completely believe the people that talk about them. I’m sure that they…

Once upon an innocent time, Mel Gibson smuggled a print of “The Passion of the Christ” to John Paul II, who reportedly murmured, “It is as it was,” as the credits rolled. Then it turned out JP2 might not have said it at all, or maybe was talking about Propaganda Night at the old Krakow…

Pigs are flying, hell is freezing over, the night has turn to day and the day to night. The impossible has happened: Britney Spears is divorcing Kevin Federline after two long years of marriage. You can’t tell me that you were surprised. Well, maybe surprised that it took this long. Citing the usual “irreconcilable differences,”…

Like every other “Lost” fan, I enjoy theorizing with my fellow addicts, and a recent conversation proved intriguing enough to blog. This season, I’ve been watching weekly with a group of friends and dissecting different possible interpretations afterward. The following is the theory I heard, which I think is quite original, if not necessarily accurate.…

For anyone raised Catholic, this video of Jesuit priests lip-syncing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” is a special blessing. And yes, wacky wigs notwithstanding, all the men are real priests: here’s the very buttoned-down bio of one. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. Totally.

With Apartheid in South Africa having officially ended in 1990, a political thriller like “Catch A Fire,” which went to wide release this past weekend, could easily feel like it is outdated or, at the very least, feel like a story we have heard before. Yet this bio-pic about the true story of activist Patrick…

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