Idol Chatter

As you may have already heard from Gospel Soundcheck blogger Joanne Brokaw, pastor and Planetshakers band member Michael Guglielmucci, recently confessed to lying about battling terminal leukemia, duping his congregation, fans, and most shockingly, his wife and family.

According to Australia's Herald Sun, "The deception included conducting performances with an oxygen tube in his nose and telling audiences he had broken bones and other unexplained symptoms."

Guglielmucci claims guilt stemming from his addiction to pornography actually created physical symptoms that included loss of hair and vomiting, which made it easy to keep his lie going.

Unfortunately, Guglielmucci isn't the first Christian music star to confess to a porn addiction. Gospel superstar Kirk Franklin confessed a few years ago to stuggling with an addiction to porn since he was 8-years-old.

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Have New York's Upper East Side rich kids set an impossibly high bar for titillation, or will their West Coast Beverly Hills-dwelling teen counterparts kick their six-packs and bikinis up a notch, making the new "90210" a real contender?

When the Parents' Television council called the teen drama "Gossip Girl" (also airing on the CW) "mind-blowingly inappropriate," they didn't mean it as an endorsement. But the show's promoters latched on to the controversy-implying statement and used it in their advertising because they know that the forbidden holds appeal, especially for the intended teen audience.

In the original "90210," the scene was introduced through the innocent eyes of Minnesota-bred twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh; their gradual acclimation into Beverly Hills was both social success and perhaps a corruption of their Midwestern values. But whatever they encountered as school, they always had their stable, if somewhat square, parents to come home to. What kind of context will the new "90210" provide in terms of family stability?

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In a bit of irony that one only hopes he's enjoying in his latest destination somewhere beyond the stars, Dave Freeman, co-author of the groundbreaking 1999 travel book "100 Things to Do Before You Die," passed away on Aug. 17 after falling in his Venice, Calif. home. He was just 47. The book not only inspired what is now practically its own genre of books (as well as movies like "The Bucket List), Freeman's title "reminded mortal readers that time was limited," according to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

Freeman's death only reinforces the theme he lived and preached in his way through the "100 Things" franchise, which began as a website founded with Neil Teplica in 1996. According to Teplica, the title meant "you should live every day like it would be your last, and there's not that many people who do, It's a credit to Dave -- he didn't have enough days, but he lived them like he should have."

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Author and megachurch pastor Lee Strobel wasn't always such a high profile Christian--he was actually a spiritual skeptic until the early 80s. However, after interviewing dozens of scientists for his books "The Case for Christ," "The Case for a Creator," and "The Case for Faith," Strobel concludes that the latest evidence points to God as the creator of the universe.

On September 2nd, the DVD version of "The Case for Faith" will hit stores. But, you don't have to wait to secure your copy. Beliefnet has 10 copies to give away.

Want one?

Post a comment below by September 5th answering the question: "Was there ever a time when you had doubts about your faith? What happened?"

Make sure you include your email address in the designated area (it won't be made public). The 10 best responses--based on the judgment of the Idol Chatter editors--will win a copy opf the DVD.

Please read the legal stuff before entering.

Did you watch the Democratic National Convention on TV Monday night? No. Neither did I. It made me think back to that "West Wing" episode of a few years ago, where the dramatic twist featured all three major television network presidents informing the White House staff that they would only be covering one hour of the convention, rather than the traditional gavel-to-gavel coverage of all four nights.

Back then, the very thought of this was obnoxiously impossible, but the points the characters made were strong: conventions, they said, were neither news nor entertainment anymore.

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