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For those that don’t know, Secret Millionaire follows millionaires who live the life of the poor for a week as they seek out people in need, to whom, at the end of the week, they give lavish amounts of money to.

I like this show. I think it’s ironic that it’s on FOX and that, at least in the two hour premiere I’ve seen, the Secret Millionaires mostly meet people helping other people through church-sponsored ministries.

It’s as if FOX is showing the world what most Baptist kids have experienced who’ve ever gone on a mission trip. No, we didn’t give lavish checks, but we gave a week, got out of our comfortable surroundings, and dug into the hard work of trying to help those in need. But then we’d come back to our “normal” lives, and we’d feel uncomfortable in this “normalcy” for awhile, but a few weeks would pass, the feeling would be gone, and we’d be back to living for ourselves. I assume that was the case for most of us; it was for me. Then again, there were the chosen few who, through one week of mission work, would get the call from God (why is it so clear for some and not others?), and they’d be headed off to Africa, or New York, or somewhere that people needed help. Which is really everywhere, but I digress.

Secret Millionaire is a great show. It’s actually doing some good. It’s worthwhile “reality” TV, if there is such a thing. I was readily engaged with the first show, where a millionaire dad and his son spent a week living in poverty. I started crying when he handed the first check to a woman who had once been homeless and had lived in a creek-bed for a year. This same woman, under the assumption that her new employee and his son were both living hand-to-mouth, took them under her wing and helped them out because someone once helped her out. When she received a check for $50,000, her first reaction was to say “I can’t accept that” over and over and over again. It was too much.

I started crying because it’s such a real depiction of what we do with God’s grace.

It’s too much.
We don’t feel worthy of it.
We don’t feel like we’ve earned it.
It’s too much.
There’s no way we could ever accept it.
Why would anyone want to give us that much of anything worth something?
It’s too much.

And I believe a lot of us live in that moment, shirking back from all that God wants to give us, repeating “It’s too much.”

It is too much.
And we will never do enough to earn it.
So do like the lady did.
Take it.
Say thanks.

Then live your life in response to that kind of generous grace.

Zatz Not Funny, a general PVR blog with a Tivo bent, reports that CBS will stream every single game of this year’s March Madness tournament. You won’t even suffer from local blackouts. But what will the quality be like? Looks like I won’t have to spend anything on DirecTv’s March Madness pass. Not that I was going to.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Memphis lost in the first round? Well, it’d be ironic, but I doubt it’ll happen.

DirecTV (to which I happily subscribe) will have an interactive, multi-screen presentation of the Masters this year. How providential that this is the same year in which I was afforded the opportunity to go hi-def, widescreen, plasma, and large. I may need to take a 4-day weekend.

After all, it’ll be the start of Tiger’s Grand Slam year.

I find the Writer’s strike fascinating, and not just because I wish I were one of them. Not necessarily striking and not making money (although some days it feels like that), but I find their motivations just, and the ramifications of their choice are already occurring and will soon be imminently noticeable. The irony is that as the new fall season was beginning, I had almost chosen to put our Netflix membership on hiatus, what with so many enjoyable shows to watch. Now that the strike seems to be for the long-haul, I’m upping our number of DVDs out. That makes me wonder, although I think I know the answer, do the writer’s get a piece of my $15/month for Netflix?

As for the prompting of this post, Damon Lindelof, co-writer of LOST, wrote an article about the strike for the New York Times. To him, it is about money, but it’s also about more than that. It’s about the future of television.

Via this article at TVSquad.com, The Daily Show is now free for anyone to view, starting with Jon Stewart’s first show in 1999.

Searchable by correspondent or topic, I plan to peruse Steve Carrell’s clips when time allows. I’m a late-comer to the party on The Daily Show, after just starting to record it earlier this year. However, as for Mr. Carrell, the wife and I have been fans since The Office got it’s own U.S. version.

Plus, the fact that Stephen Colbert is “running” for President is brilliant. Jonathan Swift would be proud.

Tunefind allows you to search by TV or Movie title or artist for songs recently featured on television shows or movies. I stumbled across it because I was looking for a song used in, yes, you guessed it, the opening episode of this year’s Friday Night Lights (Fridays at 8pm on NBC). The song, by the way, that I found within three seconds of finding Tunefind is Wilco’s Muzzle of Bees. I have no idea what the song it about, but I sure do love the sound.

Although I haven’t followed the race all that closely, I just saw Barack Obama on The Daily Show and wanted to know about his stance on certain issues, as well as whatever I could find for the other candidates. Of course, with the web the way it is, someone’s made a nice chart:

Click the pic to view larger.

I also wanted to find a place that might list their religious beliefs and/or affiliations. Any suggestions?

I read an article today in Creative Cow Magazine (www.creativecow.net) about the “war” between hi-def and lo-res. You wouldn’t think those two factions would have so much animosity towards each other, but who am I to dictate cultural policy?

As it stands, the “war” centers on the fact that, contrary to supposed opinion and many long-held prophesies, the adoption rate of hi-def content viewers is vastly inferior to the numbers of the lo-res youtubers. The article cited the following as barriers to more hi-def viewers:

• poor sales of the PS3, which includes a blu-ray hi-def dvd player
• the need for repurchasing, at a premium price, your entire dvd collection
• the cost of hi-def televisions
• the ability to receive and record hi-def programming via cable or satellite (meaning you don’t have to buy more content)

On the other hand, Youtube has ushered in the age of democratic video - by the people, for the people, all the time, anytime, with any content, at resolutions heretofore unwanted by professionals. They’ve had tremendous growth. If your video goes viral, you could have millions of viewers, worldwide. Youtube is an independent content producers’ best outlet, and, as with the web itself, content is king. Content trumps clarity.

As long as your story is clear, today’s kids don’t care how it looks - just that it speaks to them. Make them laugh with singing silk trees, make them cry with an old man singing a Coldplay song, make them think, make them stop. Whatever it is, just make it and get it on the web - that seems to be the moral of this “war.”

As the article asked, will this year be the year of hi-def? Like last year and the year before it were supposed to be? I doubt it. The solution now, as the article also suggested, is to be ready for both. If you make content and have the ability, create your movies with both technologies in mind, in hi-def and web-ready. If you lack the equipment, shoot lo-res, upload, and call it a day.

What do you watch more? Your hi-def TV or that certain youtube video that everyone’s seen a million times?

It’s amazing to me that with the number of entertainment choices we have, we still manage to fall into watching a reality TV series during the summer. It’s unintentional, but it seems to happen every summer. This summer we’ve fallen for a couple of cooking shows, Hell’s Kitchen and The Next Food Network Star. We know it’s not really real (do all chefs cry?), that the surprises may only be surprising to the contestants, and that conflict and flailing arms apparently make for good television. Well, maybe not good, but at least entertaining. Remind me to never become a chef.

I should add On the Lot to that list, but it’s been given fairly bad reviews. Reformatted, it could do well and be much more engaging, but otherwise, in the words of Carrie Fisher, “um…it was good…not great…not bad…it could have been somewhat, somehow, someway, better than…well, just, uh, yeah, good job.” That about sums up the way most of the critics feel too.

The ad of the day is for truck accessories, which, if you have a truck, I assume you need accessories.

I think I can wait for the day when Reality TV actually lives up to its name, where you can tune into anyone’s live feed (a la Justin.tv). I had the thought the other day, and I expect royalties now if this become a reality, that a tiny camera should be implanted behind our eyes that continually records the last hour we’ve seen, thus capturing those moments otherwise lost, like the time your dog missed the turn and ran into the wall. And then you’ll be able to stream that to the Internet. And that will be Reality TV.

Thank God for books.

I’m in the early stages of starting a video ministry at the church. We’re looking at cameras. I have some great ideas from the Willow Creek Arts Conference. I’m talking video editing with one of the guys from Austin’s own eleven72 here in a few weeks. I bought In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch, a bible, of sorts, for video editors. I’m getting The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing via Netflix in a few days. Obviously, I’ve got the bug, the fever, and what can cure my fever? More cowbell. Or a nice camera. Or both. Also, a MacBook Pro, a few hard drives, new network cables, Final Cut Pro, and a book on how to use Final Cut Pro.

As such, I’ve taken to watching On the Lot. It’s an American Idol-type show, but for filmmakers. It’s not bad, but it’s not great. I read an article just yesterday detailing how the show could be better and I agreed with every suggestion. (Of course I can’t find the article at the moment). Right now, it’s just a short film festival show (you can see the contestants’ films on their site), with no behind-the-scenes on how the directors actually pulled off shooting a 3-minute comedy in a week, or showing the tensions and frustrations and confrontations that are sure to have happened; isn’t that reality programming at its core?

Sure, the films are entertaining, whether they’re truly good or good in the same way movies on Mystery Science Theater 3000 are. But you’d think it’d be better with Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg’s names attached to it. Maybe Steve’s too busy trying to make Harrison Ford young. I’m glad the show is on. It’s showing me that it is difficult to be a filmmaker. Pointing a camera does not a filmmaker make.

I don’t want to make films, but I do want to tell stories. Stories that demand a reaction.