I recently came across the video and thought it good to pass along.  I love this song as well.

For instance, Simon Cowel on American Idol. Simon is easily pointed out as the toughest, cruelest, and meanest judge on the show. Every year I want to throw large inanimate objects at my TV when he says the following words “I’m not being mean, but…”

If you watch the show, then you know that the next words that come out of his mouth are somewhere along the lines of this:
“…that was the worst audition I’ve ever heard.”
“…you’re ugly.”
“…your voice sounds like the noise a cat jumping of the Empire State Building would make as it’s falling.”

Sad part is, that last quote is something he actually said on the show a few weeks back! Talk about harsh. Simon doesn’t like to think he’s mean–Instead he says that he’s “brutally honest.” Seems like someone’s just making up excuses to do what’s wrong instead doing what’s right.

Oh wait.

I do that all the time. Everyday, actually. I make up excuses for the things I do wrong–the sins I commit almost on purpose. Such as walking away from the clean dishwasher in the morning because “I’m late” or being mean to my brother because “he started it” or “he’s getting on my nerves.”

We all make excuses to work around our lifestyle. God gives us standards to live by, and when we don’t meet those standards we come up with excuses. Paul explains the need for perfection in Philippians 3: 7-14. To sum it up, he says that everything he thought was awesome or fine or so-so before is now junk. Nothing’s important but the love of Christ. Paul acknowledges that he’s nothing without Jesus, he needs him, and longs to become closer to him. To become closer to Jesus he strives to be perfect, yet realizes he’s never going to reach that goal. The less imperfect he becomes, the closer to God he gets. And that’s really all that matters.

If you know me, you know that I LOVE PAUL. Everything in the bible that Paul writes never ceases to amaze me. Especially this passage. It’s so wonderfully simple: give it all up to Jesus. It’s really hard to give up control, especially when it comes to things I don’t want to do (and thus, make up excuses NOT to do them). That being said, I’m confident, and know from other life experiences that when I do, everything changes for the better and my relationship with Christ grows.

Philippians 3 & 4 are my favorite, I encourage you to read them when you have the chance. And feedback is always fantastic. Thanks for reading!

Here is my review of the movie:

A MUST see for every parent of a middle school or high school student.  I consider myself fairly connected to the culture of students and even this movie shocked me to see it on the big screen.

Let me share with you why, as a parent, you should see this movie:

1. It will remind you of what is was like to walk the hallways of your school campus when you were a teen.
2. It will surprise you as to how, more hostile, students have become today.
3. It will, hopefully, give you a passion to sit down with your students and begin a conversation concerning labels and where they fit in with their peers.
4. It will help you construct a plan with your students as to how God wants them to love, unconditionally, those He brings in their path.

I was reminded of how hard it is to be a student and this culture is even more relentless.

Note:  I would NOT let your student see this movie without you previewing it first.  Due to the intensity of the setting, it is a lot for most students to handle.

Here is a review by the New York Times:

“American Teen” is populated by high school archetypes, kids who might have stepped out of the mists of your own adolescence or, if you’ve managed to suppress those memories, out of other teen movies, from the canonical works of John Hughes to, um, “Not Another Teen Movie.”

There is the blond popular girl, Megan Krizmanich, and her blond sidekick, Ali Wikalinska, young women who wield inordinate power over the social fates of their peers. There is Colin Clemens, the basketball star hoping to land a college scholarship and facing pressure at home from his ex-athlete dad. There is Hannah Bailey, the artsy misfit girl who dreams of becoming a filmmaker and who enters into a transgressive romance with a dimple-chinned athlete named Mitch Reinholt. And there is also Jake Tusing, a self-identified nerd with a bad haircut, serious acne and a heavy video-game habit.

They are all helpfully labeled on the film’s Web site — Princess, Jock, Rebel, Heartthrob and Geek — and then shoehorned into a series of senior-year narratives, each one turning on a predictable but nonetheless gripping question. Will the popular girl get her comeuppance, or see the error of her ways? Will the geek get a date for the prom? Will it work out between the arty girl and her mismatched beau? Will the team win the big game?

Not everything works out according to the teen movie formula. There are some odd developments and unexpected reversals — a trip to Tijuana, a breakup via text message — to complicate the anticipated narrative arc. There are moments of breathtaking cruelty, unguarded emotion and plain weirdness. And there are some genuinely scary turns, as when Hannah, brutally dumped by the boyfriend before Mitch, falls into a depression so severe that she can’t bring herself to go to school.

But the real twist is that all the characters in “American Teen” are real people, students in Warsaw, Ind.,

discovered by Nanette Burstein and arrayed in her fascinating, queasy-making new documentary. The fascination comes from how unguarded these young people seem to be about their own lives, speaking frankly to the camera and allowing it to observe uncomfortable and intimate moments in their lives. The queasiness, inevitably, arises from the same source.

It goes without saying that a documentary film that finds non-famous, non-adult people at an especially vulnerable crux in their lives is something of an ethical minefield. Can a filmmaker investigate the sexual, emotional and family lives of innocent youngsters without slipping into exploitation? The easy answer, confirmed by “American Teen,” is no way. And why even try? In a project like this one, the line between sympathy and prurience is not so much thin as nonexistent. Once we know a little about how these kids think, interact and behave, we are caught between the hunger to know everything and the impulse to look away before we learn too much.

Not that Ms. Burstein shows us anything explicit, shocking or even especially surprising. “American Teen” includes some swearing, drinking and smoking, a lot of vicious gossip and a smattering of sex talk, but nothing likely to feed the cultural appetite for panic at the spectacle of kids gone wrong. What might make an older viewer feel a little squeamish is that the Warsaw High seniors seem almost completely undefended, without the sense of shame or privacy that might protect them from our prying eyes. Even when they are wearing microphones, few of them display much visible self-consciousness or discomfort. You might almost think they were acting out scenes rather than just living their lives.

And in a way they are, and not only because some of the dramatic moments Ms. Burstein captures feel as if they might have been rehearsed. Adolescence has more than its share of built-in drama, and high school can resemble an endless series of auditions, performances and soap opera episodes. But the members of the class of 2006, to which the subjects of in “American Teen” belong, are part of a generation whose media-saturated lives make Andy Warhol and Marshall McLuhan look positively naïve. Ms. Burstein’s presence, invisible and unremarked upon, is in a way almost redundant in the era of Facebook, YouTube and reality television. These kids were toddlers when MTV first aired “The Real World,” and being on camera, or online, is another way of being themselves.

The contrivances of “American Teen” — the animated sequences, the arrangement of chaotic events into coherent story lines, the withholding of information to increase the impact of its disclosure — become tokens of authenticity. This is the kind of movie the people in it might have made, which means that its revelatory power as an investigation of teenage life in America is limited. It tweaks but does not entirely satisfy your desire to see the alleged typicality of the Warsaw High seniors deepened into a source of social insight. Matters of class come up only obliquely, and parents are largely in the shadows, and when they emerge they are reliably clueless, bumbling and unsympathetic. They have the double disadvantage of being grown-ups in a teen movie and of being, compared with their children, less intuitively aware of what it means to parade before the camera, on screen, living an ordinary American life.

“American Teen” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It depicts or refers to teenage drinking, smoking, sex and swearing.

My wife and I had a date the other day at one of the local theaters and while sitting through the previews, a movie came across that was a new one to me–American Teen. 

I was immediately intrigued.  Perhaps because it is about teenagers, or maybe because it takes place in my home state of Indiana or it could be reality of it all.  I actually think my intrigue-ness is a result of all those things.

The movie is a look into the real life world of 5 Indiana teens. The five teens range in social status from the nerdy, awkward boy to the star jock.  We see the snotty but pretty girl along with the girl who is all about discovering herself through the arts.  Oh, and there is also that guy that we all wanted to punch because he seemed so perfect it made us all sick.  As an adult you can probably relate to one of these teens and as a teen you were one of them.

Anna and I just sat there, mesmerized by this movie preview and have been anxiously awaiting its release July 25th.

If you work with teens or are a parent of a teen, mark your calendar for this movie!