I, Shane › Shane Adams’ personal weblog

Today, People Magazine posted a story online (I got the link from CNN, I swear) in which Vanessa Hudgens (she of High School Musical fame) shares the “secret to her great relationship with co-star Zac Efron.”

There are so many things wrong with this story, but I’d like to tackle her “secret.”

“If you really love someone, you shouldn’t have to work at it,” the actress tells Cosmo Girl! for its July/August issue, reports Entertainment Tonight. “You finish each others’ sentences and have the same sense of humor.”

First of all, it should be assumed that we all know this is a 19-year-old talking about the secret of her great relationship with her 20-year-old co-star. It’s beyond ridiculousness. Hudgens and Efron have been dating since October of 2007. For those of you that are bad with math, that’s less than 12 months.

While a great relationship should not feel like work, you still have to work at it. If I’m going to take a celebrity’s sage advice about relationships, I’ll stick with my boy Will Smith who said:

“Counseling, individual learning, books, conflict resolution,” Smith confided. “It is a full time job to try and be happy. People tend to think that they can go to work for 50 or 60 hours a week and then come home and their relationship is just supposed to work.”

That’s the truth. Why would you spend less time working at your relationship than you do on your career? I know that People’s business is selling magazines and driving traffic to their site, but it’s really irresponsible for them to prop up this lackadaisical attitude toward relationships, especially from a teenage pop star who has been in her supposed “serious” relationship less than a year.

Over the past several months, Alli and I have been doing some pre-marital counseling for a couple that I will be marrying in late July. It’s been a terrific experience because out of all the things I’m good at, I think I’m probably best at being married. It’s not a skill that will necessarily lead to a long, illustrious career, but it sure makes my life a lot more enjoyable.

One of the things that I’ve found is a constant in the couples that I look to as relationship mentors in my life is that if you want to make a relationship or a marriage work, you should work harder at your relationship than you would in your career. When you do, it won’t feel like work. You’ll be happier, your significant other will be happier, and you’ll find that working at a relationship can be the most rewarding thing that you’ll ever do. If I had but one piece of advice to give to couples, that would be it.

That, and don’t get relationship advice from 19-year-olds in People Magazine.

When I was in college, I loved my magazines. I got all the typical “dude” magazines — Maxim, Stuff…I think I even got FHM for a while. I read every Maxim cover-to-cover. At that time, it was a great magazine. It sounds corny, but I really did read it for the articles. I still remember an article on Saddam Hussein’s two sons that was particularly harrowing and fascinating.

Over time, I grew out of that mentality. I got married and began my search for a better magazine, one that was relevant to what I liked and what interested me. I tried GQ for a while. I thought that GQ was a sensible step forward from Maxim, something a little more mature. Except that it was too mature. I was still in my 20’s and GQ seemed so late-30’s to me. Plus, it took itself a lot more seriously than it should, especially when they were running articles about how Jessica Simpson was the “All-American Girl”.

For the last couple years, I’ve been subscribing to Wired. I figured as a technology professional, it made sense. It’s an interesting enough magazine, filled with fascinating articles and nerdy things. There tend to be very interesting nuggets, but they are not nearly as frequent as I’d like.

Then, last summer before we left for Italy, I picked up Best Life, a magazine put out by the editors of Men’s Health. I steered clear of picking it up at first, focusing on the books I had brought to read. But on the train one day, I pulled out my Best Life, an oversized magazine that looked promising.

I ended up reading the magazine cover-to-cover. Each section was well-written and extremely interesting and had insight into things that mattered like how to improve your finances and your relationships, your health and your career.

Finally, a magazine that that I looked forward to getting every month!

One problem. It only comes out 10 times per year. That is not acceptable. At least give me my other two issues for my subscription fees. And keep the great issues coming.

CNN is reporting that Heath Ledger is dead.

This sucks. First and foremost for his daughter with Michelle Williams, Matilda.

They have not said what the cause of death was yet. I hope for his daughter’s sake it wasn’t suicide or drugs. I imagine that would mess a kid up pretty good. I never saw him as the suicidal/druggie type. He seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders despite the whirlwind romance/marriage/divorce he had with Williams.

He was also a really good actor. More details available in the main news outlets.

I’m not sure where these reality shows manage to find the losers they put in front of the camera in between events. Jeff Probst’s previous gig before Survivor was Rock N Roll Jeopardy. Ryan Seacrest had a radio show in Los Angeles before American Idol. Chris Harrison hosted Designer’s Challenge on HGTV before The Bachelor. And these are all people who I would consider more qualified to host reality shows than Samantha Harris.

I’m not proud to admit that I watch Dancing with the Stars, but one thing I do is that I mute the TV whenever Samantha Harris is on the screen. Andy Denhart of reality blurred recently published an article on MSNBC giving several instances of Harris’ awfulness as a host.

Harris is just absolutely and completely lost half the time, constantly referring to her handy-dandy postcard to be saved from herself. Is it really that hard to ask interesting questions? I seriously don’t think she pays attention at all to the show and has a monkey behind the camera telling her what to say. Although a monkey might make more sense…

ABC, I beg of you to get rid of her from this show. Having Tom Bergeron’s cheesiness is plenty to stomach during the show. We really don’t need Samantha’s babbling on a show where the host’s other gig is America’s Funniest Home Videos and the top prize is a mirror ball trophy.

Alli and I were equally stunned when Sabrina the Cheetah Girl was sent home from Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday.

It just goes to show you that popularity is probably more important than talent. Not a good lesson for kids, but it’s really the main lesson that reality shows teach us. Taylor Hicks is a godawful American Idol, but he won because more people voted for him. There are countless examples of the Taylor Hicks Effect - reality show contestants who are prematurely voted off because the more rabid fans of those less talented are more likely to vote than the people like me who watch the shows, but don’t take the time to vote.

I’d much rather complain about the results than pick up my phone.

I wonder if it was a ploy by ABC to try and get more people to vote - someone suggested that online (perhaps Entertainment Weekly). I wouldn’t put it beneath them.

I hate being a Reality TV junkie.

So, given that I’m a massive Beatles fan, I was predisposed to like this movie. Lots of Beatles music, romantic, emotional - all the things that I adore.

I was overwhelmed.

Ever since I saw the trailer several months ago, I have been wanting to see this movie. It’s been out in limited release since the middle of September, finally making it to the Olathe 30 AMC as a part of their AMC Select movies. Alli and I made a date last night and caught the 7:45 showing, which was amazingly full. And it wasn’t full of people like me or even my parents who grew up with the Beatles and this era. Mostly it was teenagers who were rowdy before the movie and I was very close to getting upset. But once the movie started, I was drawn in and they shut their mouths and watched what I texted to my brother after as “the best movie I’ve seen in 5 years”.

That’s not to say that you should run out and see it. This movie is not for everyone. But it was most definitely for me.

Directed by Julie Taymor, most famously known as the director of Frida and the woman who brought The Lion King to the stage. She probably has more notoriety on Broadway, but that made her perfect to direct what was essentially a musical.

Across the Universe brought me back to when I first watched the movie Hair with Treat Williams and Bevery D’Angelo. It’s really a combination of that and Rent, except with better music and a plot that seems like it actually could have happened to someone.

Set during the ’60s, Across the Universe follows Liverpool-transplant (natch) Jude (played amazingly by Jim Sturgess) as he immerses himself in the psychedelic and anti-war counter-culture of the Vietnam era. He meets a spoiled Princeton student named Max and they galavant across the US with a mish-mash of company from a Jimi Hendrix lookalike to a girl named Prudence. And all of it set against the backdrop of only songs by The Beatles.

There are some fantastic cameos by Bono and Eddie Izzard. Bono’s character is based on Ken Kesey, while Eddie Izzard’s…well, you really just need to see the movie to understand his.

The film is filled with vibrant and energetic scenes, but is not so saturated as to seem cartoonish. Amazingly, the music, while all composed by members of The Beatles, is all sung by the main members of the cast. This isn’t the first movie to do that, but having to live up to The Beatles is no small task. Each of the main cast members responds extremely well, including Evan Rachel Wood, who has a surprisingly good voice, although her Lucy character could have been played by any number of actresses.

Ultimately, Across the Universe is a love story about Jude and Lucy, but it is set against the violence of the mid 1960’s, when The Beatles were at their most popular. The music is brilliant, but with Lennon and McCartney composing all of it, you can’t really go wrong.

It bears repeating that this movie isn’t for everyone. It is politically-charged and you’ll find plenty of places to draw the comparisons between the war we are in currently and the war we were in back then. There is plenty of alluded to drug use. Still, it resonated with me in such a strong way that I couldn’t help but call my dad after the movie ended and he was already asleep and say to him (after all, it was he who made me love The Beatles): “Dad, I don’t care if you’re sleeping right now. You should wake up, put on clothes and go to the next showing of Across the Universe. You shouldn’t wait. It’s that good.”

Now, if you’re not a fan of the music of The Beatles, I probably wouldn’t recommend it. But if so, you should RUN - not walk - to see this movie.

We received a very unfortunate piece of news on the final day of our vacation: Alli’s high school art teacher and mentor had passed away after a battle with cancer. It was a really rough time - Ms. McGuire was the reason that Alli became a painter and much of the reason that Alli took the trip to Europe to see all of the artwork that we did.

The news came as a shock to her, but we were buoyed by the fact that we would in fact be arriving home in just enough time to drive to Council Bluffs for the memorial service. We waited quietly for Claudio to come pick us up so we could make our train from Naples to Rome.

We decided early on that we would fly in and out of Paris because it was considerably cheaper than flying out of Rome. Plus, it gave us the opportunity to see Paris, which was something that I really wanted to do with Alli.

What this meant, though, was that we would have a full day of travel our last day of vacation. First we would ride with Claudio to Naples, then we would catch a train to Rome, and then we would catch another train that would take us overnight to Paris, where we would wake up and have plenty of time to make our flight home from Charles de Gaulle airport.

The first part of the trip went remarkably well. We arrived in Naples with plenty of time to make our train (thanks to Claudio, the consiglieri of the Italian Taxi Mob), and we arrived in Rome with enough time to grab some food before our night train.

We went to a place called Mr. Panino, a fast-food, Italian version of Subway, only without all the health. Man, was it ever disgusting. We grabbed our last gelato of the trip in the airport and it ended up almost making up for the nastiness that was Mr. Panino - it was creamy and tasty, probably the 3rd best gelato we had (out of 11 total, I think).

Our train from Rome to Paris was slightly delayed, which sucked because the Rome Termini train station is a madhouse, full of begging gypsies who exploit their own children and various vagabonds and smokers. Plus, it was spectacularly hot.

When we got on the train and into our tiny traveling car (the picture at right shows ALL of the room - the beds are behind that mirror and fold down), the heat was stifling. The air conditioning was barely leaking out of the single vent by the window and it didn’t work properly unless you shut yourself in the closet of a room, which emphasized the suffocating nature of the heat.

We pulled away from the station about 30 minutes late, which didn’t cause us a ton of worry - the guy who was the train representative in our coach assured us we’d make up the time on the way. Even if we didn’t, we had over 4 hours to make our plane when we arrived in Paris - plenty of time to get from Gare du Nord, where we’d be arriving, up to the second Charles de Gaulle airport train terminal.

Alli and I passed some of the time watching episodes of The Office on our ipod video (totally genius) and The Italian Job. We tried putting the beds down and crowding into one of them, but the heat persisted through most of the night, keeping us plenty uncomfortable along the way. We attempted sleep, but as it was before, sleep was difficult on the train. It was made more difficult when in the middle of the night, we discovered that we were stopped in the middle of nowhere. We got concerned as the stops got longer; at one point we were probably stationary for over an hour.

As light came, we began passing through French towns, which was encouraging, but not uplifting considering that we had to get to Paris, which sits in the Northwest part of France. I knew that once we passed through Dijon that we were a couple hours out. We were scheduled to be in Dijon around 6:45. We arrived after 9.

We were really starting to get concerned now. The cabin train rep assured us that we’d only be 2 hours late, which would be enough time for us to make our plane still, but any later and we’d be seriously pushing it considering we were on an international flight to Newark.

The cabin train rep lied. 2 hours became 3. We now had just over an hour to get off our train, catch a metro from Southern Paris to Northeastern Paris, clear security and make our plane. It was starting to look bleak. I started to unravel and my wife, God bless her, was the one who remained calm along the way. We finally managed to get some change to get onto the subway and got quickly on the train to the airport. We had to make 11 stops in about 45 minutes.

We didn’t make it.

Considering that we were trying to return home in time for a funeral, it was a major blow. As I spoke with the Continental desk, Alli sobbed behind me, which made me all the more upset that Continental was not doing more to assist us in finding another flight out. It’s no wonder that people are disgruntled with the airline industry - Continental provided us with no assistance and absolutely no concern for our well-being. I could chalk it up to the desk workers being French, but it is the same back in the states. We need an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights and quickly.

After attempting to get on several different airlines (despite the Continental desk telling us that we couldn’t…we could for a fee), we resigned ourselves that we were not going to get home that night. We found the only hotel that was a part of the airport, the Airport Sheraton. It was certainly above what we wanted to spend, but I really did not want to get a taxi or shuttle to another, less expensive hotel. Considering that I was planning to make Trenitalia or SNCF pay for our stay, I wasn’t too worried about it (I am still waiting to hear back from them).

I had an absolutely spectacular cheeseburger - something I’d denied myself these 3 weeks - that evening in the hotel terrace restaurant. While we could have stayed somewhere cheaper, it was nice to stay in a quality hotel and get a good night’s sleep after all that we’d been through in the past 36 hours. It was awesome to get a nice hot shower and to have a comfortable bed to sleep in after sleeping on plywood for a week in Amalfi.

We awoke plenty early to make our flight, arriving when the airport opened. We got in line to clear customs and found ourselves in line for a flight to Newark that left earlier than ours did. This was weird, considering that the morons at the Continental desk told us that we were on the earliest flight out. Another Continental worker that morning managed to get us on the flight because (big surprise) all flights to Newark were delayed. The early flight, scheduled to leave at 9:10 AM was now not scheduled to leave until after NOON.

Guess what. We missed our connection in Newark. But we did finally make it. It turned out that Andie McDowell was on our flight from Paris and the first thing we saw when we got off in Newark was her yelling at someone on a cell phone - a very diva-like moment. We had almost 4 hours to wait for our flight, during which we charged our ipod.

We also had one more celebrity sighting, spotting Nicole Ritchie and all of Good Charlotte waiting for a flight to Nashville. I snapped an OK picture of her, but it’s hard to spot her baby bump. She is so small that it’s hard to imagine her carrying a baby…she looks like she’s maybe 11 years old.

We got on our flight to KC that was supposed to leave around 8:30. DELAYED. But this time, we were on the airplane and sat on the runway for OVER TWO HOURS. After this experience, I’ll never fly Continental again. I don’t care if I have to pay more to fly someone else…it won’t be Continental. It’s so confusing how airlines cannot get their stuff together. I saw an interview with the head of American Airlines and he acted like they had no control over the awfulness that plagues the airways. You and I know this isn’t true. Customer service is at an all-time low in every airline except one. You’d think that the other airlines would study what Southwest is doing right with their domestic flights and figure out how to apply it to international flights.

But alas, the major airlines are all run by morons who think they know what the customer wants, but really have no clue. We finally arrived home after a huge delay, thankful to be back on the ground in Kansas City and to be sleeping in our own bed that night. We were also thankful to have someone picking us up at the airport (thanks, mom).

As dreadful as our travel to and from Paris was…if I had to choose between going and not going…it wouldn’t even be a contest. But still…it would be nice to know that if we decided to go back that the morons who run the airlines and trains somehow managed to remove their heads from their behinds.

I’ve watched Don Imus on MSNBC before and I never really found him all that great. He always seemed kind of like an older, more tame version of Howard Stern, in my opinion, but at least he was talking about politics and relevant news rather than always trying to figure out if a girl’s boobs were real.

In a move that surprised no one, CBS fired Imus yesterday shortly after MSNBC had canceled the televised simulcast of his show.

So what now?

There has been a lot of response to the firing of Imus by both CBS and MSNBC and I don’t have a lot to add to it that hasn’t been said, but I wanted to talk about a couple things.

Imus probably should have been fired a long time ago. He’s been much more offensive than this before, but (and I hate to say this), but I blame the media on this firing. Their obsession with the story really fueled much of the debate. I imagine that the apology and a face-to-face with the Rutgers team (not with Al Sharpton), would have been enough. But the media has nothing sensational to talk about now that we know who Anna Nicole’s baby-daddy is. So they dragged the story out (see Anna Nicole’s death, Britney in rehab, Elian Gonzalez, Pacman Jones, etc.) because they don’t have any other good stories (like, say, the war in Iraq, the plummeting housing market, Iran, etc.).

If anything good comes out of this, it will be that perhaps politicos and pundits will be more committed to further examining our long history of racism and sexism, not just by an old semi-shock jock, but by so-called musicians who glorify sex, drugs, murder and other deviant behavior, which was very blatantly pointed out by columnist Michelle Malkin (caution - some language is more than rough). I know that there are those out there that are wanting to ban the “N” word, but why stop there? Keep in mind that we are walking into dangerous first-amendment violations, but if Imus gets fired for this, shouldn’t we start to really think about our use of all words?

Listening to some talk radio, I found that it has some hosts rattled. If someone with Imus’ long track record can get fired, they must be even more careful in the words they choose to use on their own shows. I agree to an extent, but I hope that his firing instead brings a more rational discourse to the nature of our use of language in our culture.

Too funny. Alanis Morissette played an April Fool’s Joke on Fergie by re-making a downtempo, very Alanis-like version of The Black Eyed Peas’ hit, “My Humps”. The video has been viewed on YouTube almost 5 million times since April 1.

It’s pretty funny. Enjoy.