I love Synecdoche, New York. I love it with a strange abandon that is both painfully obvious and beautifully mysterious. I love its ballsy ambition and fearlessness -- a fearlessness that nearly teeters over the edge of its own message and reason, and yet remains entirely harmonized and rooted in real life. I've examined the movie numerous ways. It hits me personally. The movie crawls into my body, and pokes at places that are tender to the touch -- places I might choose to have left well enough alone.  It makes me think of dreams, my own dreams, and theories of dreams, specifically Jungian (but I don't want to crawl into that particular portal at this moment). It reminds me of one of my literary heroes, Dostoyevsky and the concept of the doppelgänger (from Dostoevsky's brilliant The Double). It takes me to Fellini, Bunuel, Bergman. But it's all Charlie Kaufman.

I know a few people, many of them Kaufman admirers, who detest this picture. Upon first viewing, I witnessed strangers in the theater actively despise the movie, awakening from their annoyed torpor, shaking their heads to say "what a load of self indulgent crap." It was like emerging from a bizarre-o Woody Allen film only to walk into a real live Woody Allen movie, with Kaufman serving as Fellini. But I wasn't baffled by such responses, and I'm not going to challenge a viewer's contempt. I can't pull the "they just don't get it" routine. No, they just don't like it. And sometimes (sometimes) when a viewer hates a movie with that much Rex Reed foaming lather, they're actually getting more out of it than those who don't.

I don't feel it necessary to break down the plot. Selfishly, I'm returning back to myself, wondering why I like it so much. Why did the movie get to me, and beyond attempting to figure out its labyrinthian plot and outside-looking-in meta-movie-within-a play structure? Synecdoche deals with failure and death and creativity and disgusting rot and self absorption and is-that-all-there-is ponderances with such inspired aspiration and genuine soulfulness, I was left swooning with the idea that we are indeed, special and yet, not special at all. It's Benjamin Button's ugly brother showing his reality through his own kind of disorienting cinematic dreamscape.  It frightens me. And yet, I love it.

I discussed much of this, on stage with Charlie Kaufman at Ebertfest (with additional guests on board).

Here's part of the discussion. Kaufman was brilliant, and a charming fellow. And a snazzy dresser:

The mob is back in Las Vegas. (This assumes that the mob ever left). Soon there will be two museums dedicated to gangsters of the past. You'd think that Las Vegas would want people to forget its mob origins. Nope. In fact, the mayor, Oscar B. Goodman (who has represented many alleged mobsters) is very excited about the "Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement." (No, this is not my April Fools Day column). The mayor is somewhat upset because there is a rival museum that is scheduled to open soon. According to The New York Times, this other one is subtly named the "Las Vegas Mob Experience." I hope the forces behind the two museums don't settle their differences like the people they honor did.

One of the folks involved in the Las Vegas Mob Experience is Antoinette McConnell, the daughter of Chicago crime boss - I mean, alleged crime boss - Sam Giancana. The place they have in mind will actually resemble a theme park more than a museum. You know, it's good for the whole family. One of the planned exhibits will be called, "Final Fate." In this one, to get a feel for the way things were, a visitor has a chance of getting "whacked." The little kids will love that one, won't they?

Giancana's daughter makes no bones, oops, no pretense about her father's occupation. In fact, she says, "The Mafia is something people can't get enough of." When I close my eyes, I imagine how proud she'll be when they cut the opening day ribbon with a knife that has been wiped clean of all fingerprints. It's the kind of tribute that any daughter would like to give her late, beloved father.

I admit that I enjoyed going to Las Vegas back in the days that the mob ran the place. Allegedly. If you play blackjack today, your dealer is likely to be a pretty, young woman who decided to take that job instead of selling real estate. Back in the old days, it was a lot more exciting to have a scary looking dealer whose pinky ring was just slightly smaller than his head.

I've enjoyed watching movies and reading books about gangsters. I loved to watch "The Untouchables" on TV when I was a kid. However, in all of these earlier instances, the criminals were the bad guys. Maybe they fascinated us, but we weren't building a tribute to them. As much as it might be fun to sometimes romanticize these people, they were criminals. They weren't Robin Hoods. They were just hoods.

Mayor Goodman probably thought he had a way around this by not just naming the museum the "Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime", but adding "And Law Enforcement." Yeah, right. Which exhibit do you think more people would be drawn to: one about John Dillinger being gunned down after he was lured to the movie theater by the "lady in red" or one that tells where F.B.I. agents buy their shoes?

So what's behind these mob veneration ventures? What do you think? Money. The people who put together the deal for the Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement were able to buy an old federally owned building for only one dollar. That's because the building will be used for "cultural purposes." The transported and rebuilt wall from the St.Valentine's Day Massacre qualifies as culture? I guess it was between the crime museum and a new opera house.

Those behind these museums/theme parks hope they'll bring in lots of money. They believe Las Vegas will get booming again because of interest in organized crime. Sounds like the old days. Like the old days, this gangster gambit has official support. Only this time it's not under the table. The $42 million museum (the one the mayor likes) has been financed by state, federal, and local grants. And you thought the government wasted money on silly things.

But this is America, and I guess you can build whatever you want here. I know I'm not going to be the one to tell Giancana's daughter that she can't have what she wants.

Lloyd Garver has written for many television shows, ranging from "Sesame Street" to "Family Ties" to "Home Improvement" to "Frasier." He has also read many books, some of them in hardcover. He can be reached at lloydgarver@gmail.com. Check out his website at lloydgarver.com and his podcasts on iTunes.

Founded more than 60 years ago in Chicago, Turtle Wax has been making cars pretty for quite some time. While the company's mission for a "hard shell finish" remains, they are looking to ditch their very old jingle--and are asking you to create a new one.

The company, now the number one selling brand of car care products in the world, is offering $2,500 to someone who can create a jingle and put it on You Tube. An additional $1,000 will be given to a few runners-up. Though Turtle Wax is based in the Chicago suburbs, they are looking for international appeal.

Enter to win here, and check out some of the guidelines in this handy video:

The gay marriage debate got a little more complicated last week when two legally-married gay couples wanted to get divorced. The only problem? They live in Texas. While the divorces were granted, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wants both divorce rulings appealed. "That's Gay" breaks down it down in the video below, highlighting the absurdity of the fight and the irony it undoubtedly brings up. You'd think a state opposed to gay marriage would WANT gays to separate, right? Like we said, it's complicated.


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Many people say that they could believe in God if they only experienced God. "Then I would believe!" And in my last post, I suggested that one way of becoming aware of God's presence in our lives is through the very desire for God. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord," wrote St. Augustine, the fourth-century African bishop.

The desire for God, I believe, comes from God, and is in fact a way of experiencing God. So becoming aware of those desires is one of the first steps towards growing in awareness of the way God works within us.

Last week we looked at the feeling of incompletion as a way of experiencing the innate desire for God. There are other ways, as well.

Sometimes you experience a desire for God in very common situations: for example, standing silently in the snowy woods on a winter's day, finding yourself moved to tears during a movie, recognizing a strange sense of connection during a church service -- and feeling an inexpressible longing to savor this feeling, and understand what it is.

In the years after my sister gave birth to my first nephew, I often felt overwhelmed with love when I was with him. Here was a beautiful new child, a person who had never existed before, given to the world. One day I came home from a visit to their house and was so filled with love that I wept -- out of gratitude, out of joy and out of wonder. At the same time I longed to connect more with the mysterious source of this joy.

Common longings and heartfelt connections are ways of becoming conscious of the desire for God. We yearn for an understanding of feelings that seem to come from outside of us. We experience what the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross calls the desire for "I know not what."

Many of us have had experiences like this. We feel that we are standing on the brink of something important, on the edge of experiencing something just beyond us. We experience wonder. So why don't you hear more about these times?

Because many times we ignore them, reject them or deny them. We chalk them up to being overwhelmed, overwrought, overly emotional. "Oh, I was just being silly!" you might say to yourself. So you disregard that longing you feel of the first breath of a spring breeze on your face after a long dark winter, because you tell yourself (or others tell you) that you were simply being emotional. This happens even to those practiced in the spiritual life: often, after an intense experience in prayer during a retreat, people are tempted to dismiss it as simply something that "just happened."

Or we simply don't recognize these moments as possibly having their origins in God.
"I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." That's Julian Barnes, beginning his recent, and haunting, memoir Nothing to be Frightened Of. The acclaimed author of Flaubert's Parrot takes as his subject his overpowering fear of death.

Barnes writes, "I miss the God that inspired Italian painting and French stained glass, German music and English chapter houses, and those tumbledown heaps of stone on Celtic headlands which were once symbolic beacons in the darkness and the storm." Barnes misses God. Who is to say that this "missing" does not arise from the very desire for God, which comes from God?
One friend, a self-described workaholic who hadn't been to church for a long time, went to a baptism of a friend's child. Suddenly she was overtaken by powerful feelings--mainly the desire to live a more peaceful and centered existence. She began to cry, though she didn't know why. She told me that she felt an intense feeling of peace as she stood in church and watched the priest pour water over the baby's head.

To me, it seemed clear what was happening: she was experiencing, in this moment, when her defenses were down, God's desires for her. And it makes sense that a religious experience would happen in the context of a religious ceremony. But she laughed and dismissed it. "Oh," she said, "I guess I was just being emotional." And that was that.

It's a natural reaction: much in Western culture tries to tamp down or even deny these naturally spiritual experiences and explain them away in purely rational terms. It's always something other than God

Likewise we may dismiss these events as being too common, too simple to come from God. Once, Mike, a Jesuit high school teacher, preached a short homily in our house chapel. The reading for the day was a story from the Old Testament, the Second Book of Kings (5:1-19), about Naaman the Syrian. Naaman, Commander of the Syrian king's army, was suffering from leprosy, and is sent by the king to ask the Prophet Elisha for healing. In response Elisha tells him to do something simple: bathe in the Jordan River seven times.

Naaman is furious. He thought that he would be asked to wash in some other river, some more important river. His servants say, "If the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it?" In other words, why are you looking for some spectacular task? Do the simple thing. Naaman does it and is healed.

Mike said that our search for God is often like Naaman's. We're searching for something spectacular, to convince us of God's presence. Yet it is in the simple things, common events and common longings, where God may be found.

You may also fear accepting these moments as signs of the divine call. If you accept them as originating with God, you might have to accept that God wants to be in relationship with you, or is communicating with you directly, which is a frightening idea.

Fear is a common experience. Confronted with an indication that God is close to you can be alarming. Thinking about God wanting to communicate with us is something that many of us would rather avoid.

That is why so many stories in the Bible about men and women encountering the divine begin with the words, "Do not be afraid" The angel announcing the birth of Jesus to Mary says, "Do not be afraid" (Luke 1:30). Nine months later, on the eve of the birth of Jesus, the angel in the fields greets the shepherds. "Do not be afraid," the angel says (Luke 2:10). And when Jesus performs one of his first miracles in front of St. Peter, the fisherman falls to his knees, out of awe and fear. "Go away from me!" says Peter. And Jesus says, again, "Do not be afraid" (Luke 5:10).

Fear is a natural reaction to the divine, to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, as the theologian Rudolf Otto says, the mystery that both fascinates and leaves us trembling.

Religious experiences are often dismissed--not out of doubt that they aren't real, but out of fear that they are real after all.

Reflection Questions:

1) If you've never believed in God, or have doubted God's existence, have you ever had a desire for God? Or a longing for "I know not what"? How do you feel about identifying that desire as coming from God?

4) When you think of God communicating with you directly, through these heartfelt desires, does it ever make you frightened? Why? What does this say about your image of God?

In our next post, we'll look at "uncommon longings" and "everyday mysticism" as a way of experiencing God.

James Martin, SJ, is a Catholic priest and culture editor of America. This essay is adapted from his new book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.

As she struggled through her chemotherapy treatments, Rachel Murray, a Cleveland teenager with leukemia, dreamed of meeting her favorite pop star. WKYC reports, Matt Seitz, a local marketing manager and volunteer for the local chapter of the Make A Wish Foundation, was able to make Murray's dream come true. He arranged for Murray and her parents to attend the 2010 Grammy's alongside singer Rihanna.

Kelly Kleinschmidt, the Make A Wish Executive Director, said, "We know what that means for kids like Rachel to have something to wish for and to hope for. It's truly magical. Matt Seitz is our 2010 Volunteer of the Year."

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In today's Wilshire & Washington, we are joined by our special guest host for the month of May, Megan Carpentier, who will be filling in for Maegan Carberry. Carpentier is a well-read freelance writer whose work appears at RHRealityCheck.com, The Guardian, Jezebel.com, the Women's Media Center and The Gloss, among other places. She was most recently the editor of news and politics at Air America, and remains the only person she knows to have earned bylines simultaneously at Us Weekly and on Foreign Policy. (Follow her on twitter at @megancarpentier.

Today's show starts off mulling the question that is flabbergasting Washington: What comes first? Immigration reform, financial reform, or a climate change bill? President Obama wants to get it all done, and right now, financial reform appears in the lead, but current events have pushed immigration (thanks, Arizona!) and climate change (a little impending oil disaster in New Orleans) back into the national spotlight. The Republican point of view on most of these issues is pretty simple: no way, or let's do something else. What is the best focus for the Democrats before the 2010 midterm elections? Do the Democrats really want to pick up a huge controversial issue at this point, when it took them over a year to pass health care reform?

Charlie Crist's announcement that he's going to run for the Senate seat in Florida as an independent has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into prognosticators' plans for 2010. Will Crist siphon off a bunch of Democratic and Republican voters, a-la Joe Lieberman in Connecticut? Do voters have any negative feelings toward politicians who switch parties so brazenly? (Arlen Specter's switched parties twice!)

Finally, we talk the iPhone 4G story and the new trend of "checkbook journalism." With Gawker Media paying for this scoop, is this really as big as a threat to old school journalism? Is it any different when TMZ pays the paparazzi to follow celebs? Isn't this a pretty accepted practice in television journalism, like with the Salahis? At least Gawker is transparent about its checkbook journalism, like when Jezebel purchased an un-photoshopped photo of Faith Hill. Isn't the real problem transparency of these payments then, and isn't Gawker on the right side of this debate?

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player:

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Friday at 7:00am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.

The Bronx Zoo introduces three playful and adorable lion cubs today, nearly three months after their birth. The frolicking cubs were born to Sukari and M'wasi and are yet to be named. They also have an older sister Moxie.

You can catch the cubs on display from 10 am to 1 pm.

While the Daily News is holding the official naming contest, the Huffington Post would love to hear your suggestions -- just leave them in the comments!

Watch the cubs tumble and play:

In J. Lo's latest movie, The Back-up Plan, our intrepid, artificially inseminated heroine enjoys an onscreen orgasm sparked by a heady combo of some wet kissing and pregnancy hormones. As women with 27 combined months of pregnancy between us, we're both a little skeptical (as is Mary Pols, the hilarious film reviewer).

But J. Lo's spontaneous squealfest seems only slightly less plausible...and vastly less offensive...than her portrayal of the professional single mom by choice. J. Lo's character quickly meets a man -- phew! -- but her single mom gal-pals are a parade of militant or earth-mother stereotypes. "Who wants to end up like that?" the movie seems to say.

Turns out, a growing number of moms in the U.S. do. The number of single moms by choice is expanding faster than a pair of maternity jeans. The number of babies born to single mothers by choice, like the one J. Lo plays, has grown a phenomenal 145 percent since 1980, according to journalist Emily Bazelon, writing in the New York Times Magazine. Today, a whopping 40 percent of U.S. babies are born to unmarried mothers. Plus, some 13,000 single women every year adopt children domestically, and that's not counting international adoptions.

As we discuss in our new book, Influence: How Women's Soaring Economic Power will Change Our World for the Better, the rise of the single mom is just one swell in the societal tsunami transforming families around the world. The shape of families is changing right before our eyes. In the US and elsewhere, the most basic unit of society -- the traditional two parents plus 2.5 kids -- has been replaced by a wide and colorful palette of choices: same sex couples, single parents, blended families, traditional families, four or even five generations living together -- and every imaginable permutation of these options. And, like it or not, since 2007, American women are likely to spend more years of their lives single than married. Noah's Ark, with its inhabitants paired up two-by-two, is sinking. And unless our workplaces, communities and governing bodies realize that, our ability to compete in a global economy will sink along with it.

Support for families -- making sure that every family can afford high quality childcare, that every worker gets paid sick leave, that schools are safe and effective -- is crucial if women and men are going to tap into our full economic potential. But we don't have that kind of security in the U.S. Although family patterns have changed radically, most companies and legislatures act like every family is traditional -- and that they all have a stay-at-home wife taking care of the kids, caring for ailing elders and doing the housework. This, in a country where 70 percent of children grow up live in a two-income household.

Other countries face the same challenges. But instead of ignoring these new challenges, they're pioneering policies that support families even as they change. Compared to other industrialized nations, America falls flat on its face in terms of supporting families as they really exist. The United States ranks last in maternity leave, ranks 27th of 37 countries in public expenditures on childcare, and provides astonishingly little assistance for families caring for aging parents. Our nation has failed to recognize glaring truths: that hardly any kids today have a parent at home full-time, that affordable day care is as necessary and important as affordable health care, and that men and women in the workforce both have far more responsibilities outside work than ever before.

By failing to change our workplaces and policies in ways that help families, our country is threatening the well-being of kids in America. At the low end of the economic spectrum, hourly workers can lose their job if they take sick time with their kids. At the higher end, a corporate 24-7 work ethic forces parents -- typically women -- into more reasonable, but less prestigious, jobs. Saddest of all, without affordable, reliable childcare, single moms and their kids are far more likely to end up in poverty than any other group in America.

But it doesn't have to be that way. In other industrialized nations, it's not. In Sweden, about 55 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers, but these kids don't end up poor. They're just as likely as kids of married parents to live a decent life. That's because Sweden supports ample, affordable, high quality childcare and provides strong social support for families of all kinds. So mothers and children who don't fit the traditional mold can thrive just as well as those who do.

At home, we're starting to see some bold communities and work-places adapt to the changing American families--making it easier for parents to be loving, caring parents and work to their full capacity. California is now the only state in the nation to offer paid parental leave when babies are born. Several states are offering universal preschool. More and more companies are offering at least a little paternity leave to dads...and gradually, brave and loving fathers are daring to take it, despite fears about derailing their careers.

We need more families, lawmakers and communities to stand up and fight for more family-friendly workplaces and policies. If more companies and communities catch on to the real economic payoff of supporting families--happier, more productive, more focused workers who can tap into their full potential--we'll be more competitive in the global economy.

When more companies and communities finally come to their senses, we'll all have something to get excited about.