Tuesday, November 29, 2005

See Barb in San Jose

[Here is a press release for an event at which I will be speaking this coming Saturday, Dec. 3.]

PRESS RELEASE: The final days for registering for the California Catholic Women's Forum Conference, December 3, 8:30 - 1:30 pm at the San Jose Museum of Art are here! Get your registration in ASAP!

The topic is Truth and Beauty: Tools of the "Feminine Genius".
This is TRUE FEMINISM FOR REAL WOMEN.

This conference is for all women, not just Catholic ones! It will be a visually and intellectually stimulating morning! There will be a selection of books and gifts for purchase by donation - just in time for Christmas!

Final day for registering is Wednesday, November 30. Fee: STILL $45.

Fr. Tony Mancuso will open the conference with a prayer and blessing. Terry Polakovic from Denver, CO will speak on the Feminine Genius, John Paul II's term describing the uniqueness of women and their role in the culture. Barbara Nicolosi from ActOne in Hollywood, will speak on Truth and beauty as a reflection of the Truth, and how we may discern true beauty in the culture, in particular in the movies and other theater arts.

For their resumes, please check our website www.ccwf.org.

There is a downloadable registration form available on the website, www.ccwf.org.
Please e-mail us at info@ccwf.org to let us know you are coming and how many you are bringing with you.

Invite your mother, your daughter, your friend. Includes breakfast, lunch and a tour of the museum.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Act One in OSV

I happened to pick up a copy of Our Sunday Visitor outside church yesterday, and ther einside was a full-page article on Hollywood and Christians, with lots of quotes from me.

My family was sure I had planned it, but, I really didn't! We are just doing so much press these days - for Narnia, Act One, Behind the Screen, Christians taking over Hollywood - that I can't keep track of who I'm talking to and when the stories are coming out.

Just Wednesday, I was standing outside Foxwoods casino, freezing my tail off, while talking on my stupid cel phone to a reporter from the Toronto Star about godly entertainment. My sister waited impatiently inside while I went through the same five questions with the fellow. FInally, I signed off and we went right back to our previously interrupted conversation about whether we should double the smount of oysters in the turkey stuffing this year. Surreal.

Anyway, the OSV piece is quite nice. Catch it if you can.

400K!

Sometime today, this blog will surpass 400,000 visitors! How cool is that?! Thanks to all of you who continue to stop by.

God willing, I can be back to thoughtful blogging before very long.

Meanwhile, happy Thanksgiving and Advent!

Friday, November 18, 2005

Meme Confession

An Internet group I belong to is tagging each other with an "I confess" meme. I have absolutely no time to be wasting on such absurd things, which is why I wrote it in my car in traffic yesterday. Here it is for all you folks coming here from ABC Nightly News. (Sheesh...talk about blowing first impressions...)


I confess...

I confess I am so sick of being asked about Christians in Hollywood that whenever I hear myself answering questions about it, I start to fantasize about inserting "Twas Brillig and the Slithy Toad" lines in every other sentence.

I confess I come home Monday nights from teaching RCIA to entertainment industry converts and then watch Vegas on NBC.

I confess that I never really know what I think about anything until I hear myself saying it.

I confess, I too have never read The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I confess I would probably skip out of work, lie about it and backstab a few very dear friends to get one more of the Bavarian postage stamps I don't already have in my collection.

I confess that far too often when I slide into the pews and onto the kneelers Sunday mornings, I am so distracted that I am halfway through "Grace" before I realize what I am saying.

I confess I have still not seen a complete screening of anything by Tarentino - including Pulp Fiction - which, if ever discovered by many of my Gen X male students - would establish me as absolutely irrelevant and to be shunned.

I confess I am disturbingly similar to Kolya, a minor character in The Brothers Karamazov who comes in about page 510, and that I find Alyosha tedious and a little stupid.

I confess that as a child I took piano lessons for six arduous years, and the main skill I came away with was how to disguise the fact that I never learned how to read the left-hand signature.

I confess I know every word to every song on Seals & Crofts "Summer Breeze" album, including the ultra weird satiric "Yellow Dirt Down in My Soul."

I confess that I am completely distracted by babies and cats, and that any conversation I have with adults when babies and cats are present might as well not even happen.

I confess that I am so near-sighted, that I have squeezed hair gel on my toothbrush and gargaled with body splash.

I confess, I had more of an emotional rush when I met Carl Yazstremski, then when I met John Paul II.

(I confess I want to be disgusted about that last....but I just can't.)


And I hereby meme Patrick "Seize the Dei", Karen "Some Have Hats", Alice "The Fairfax", Jan "The Maven", and Amy of "The Book"

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Catch Us on ABC News!

I was interviewed tonight by ABC Nightly News. The producer said the piece would air either tomorrow or Friday. I said some stuff I liked. Best of all, I was really happy to meet the segment producer who is relatively new in town and a practicing Catholic. Very nice person - and she actually had some questions nobody has ever asked me before.

I have so much to do in the next three days I probably won't get to see it myself. Could somebody please tell my Mother?

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Godspy II

Here is a new interview I did for John Romanowsky at Godspy. I have always thought that the first interview I did with Godspy several years back was the best one I've ever done. This one is a good follow-up. Here's a snip...

We have to accept that the heart of drama is found in sin: betrayal, jealousy, greed, anger, fear, pride—that's entertainment!—and the reason for the redemption, by the way. Drama finds its suspense in stories of human beings trying and failing because of their inner demons and, then, finally succeeding by winning out over those demons. You can't take the demons out without creating stories that are sickly sentimental and absolutely useless to an audience searching for courage and inspiration on the screen. The great masters like Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Graham Greene, managed to talk about very real human darkness without wallowing in it.

Take Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the story of a serial killer wiping out a family of five. There's no gory description of the bullet tearing through flesh. She isn't about smearing blood and guts everywhere so that her readers become like passers-by at a car crash craning to see what death looks like. She uses violence to get our attention so that she can talk about grace. As my older sister the philosopher once said to me, "It's going to take the Church a hundred years to figure out where Flannery O'Connor left us in terms of literature."

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Act One in Atlantic Monthly

Here is a very fine piece which is running in the December issue of Atlantic Monthly. The writer Hanna Rosen did a great job - very fair and well-written. I have long been a big fan of The Atlantic Monthly - I think it has the best writing of any magazine out there - and so it is cool that Act One got such a good treatment therein.

We have been so blessed in media coverage. We've been on CBS, CNN, and in the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times and even Details Magazine, and we haven't had a bad story yet. Sometimes they get us a little strange, but there hasn't been one bigotted nasty piece yet. [Barb knocking on her head.]

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Proposed Masters Program

I was asked to post the following. It sounds like a good idea. Of course, everything depends on who is engaged to teach...

----------------

Franciscan University’s English department is in the process of creating a proposal for a Master’s degree in Creative Writing with a Catholic emphasis. If you or someone you know would be interested, it would greatly help to document the need for this program in getting it approved.


Please contact Dr. David Craig by regular mail at Franciscan University of Steubenville, 1235 University Boulevard, Steubenville, Ohio 43952-1763, or e-mail at dcraig@franciscan.edu

Friday, November 04, 2005

Barbcast

Friend and tech-guru, Clayton Emmer, has notified me that a recent talk of mine is now available to the planet as a podcast, here.

The talk was titled, "The Sacraments and the Life of the Artist," but I really don'tremember spending that much time on the artist. Oh, wait, maybe I did a little. The audience was almost all young Hollywood professionals and actors, so a lot of my references are to surviing in "this town." It isn't a theological talk as much as what I think of as "practical spirituality" - basically, power ideals and techniques for creative types who don't have a lot of patience for theory, but love stories and strategies.

Anyway, enjoy it - if you can figure out how to make it play. (I almost gave up...until I realized that I had the sound turned down on my laptop. Sheesh.)

P.S. Got a pre-interview for The Today Show later today. I'll keep you posted if I am deemed story worthy.

P.P.S. Act One is featured in the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Should be interesting to see how we come out sounding.

P.P.P.S. Act One will also be featured in an article in Premiere in the February issue. No need to let you know this early except I miss blogging and malingering here is making me wistful...