So you think I haven’t abandoned all of you, I’m hard at work on the new Craig Brewer film Black Snake Moan and the hours are long and tedious. I won’t be updating very much until we wrap out October 28th, so please continue with your life’s work and know that I’m engaged in part of my own right now.

One of the great joys I get from working on films like this one is not merely the name actors who are working on the picture — occasionally, some of my favorite character actors appear, and none I have come across so far am I meeting with as much excitement as this one. S. Epatha Merkerson is best known as Lt. Anita Van Buren on Law & Order, but I still fondly remember her both as Reba the Mail Lady from Pee Wee’s Playhouse and her Tony-winning performance as Bernice in the Broadway production of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. Tomorrow, she will be working with us and I am very much looking forward to it. I hope all of you are well and you’re taking your vitamins and stuff. I’m going to bed now and try to get 6 good hours of sleep.

So to my friends and readers and family and whoever else, I just found a groove that I’ve been in for a few days now — I’m working on that project that I was stressing about wanting to be involved with and it’s taking up most of my time. We’re talking about 12-16 hour days, but that’s about normal for this sort of thing.

In response to some friends/family members’ next question, no I am not going to write DIRECTLY about any happenings with the project on this blog because of a confidentiality agreement that we sign when we start work. As I have to remind people frequently, I’m not just me when I’m working, I’m also the job. As such, I can’t turn this into a gossip blog regarding the project because after all, some of the people on the project actually read my website and I have to honor my agreeements with them.

I can tell you this much, though. There is an inexorable feeling of lightness in my life right now, to have a sense of being both needed and wanted by the people that I work with. I think I want to run away and join the circus.

Now, is there a doctor in the house? I need a cortizone shot or some Nasocort badly or I will never get my voice back. “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” one of my co-workers told me after two long days of moving the crowd into action. “You gotta be in it for the long haul on this one, so conserve your strength.” I appreciate the advice there, I only wish I’d heard it before I put the level on 10. Now I have something I have to live up to, a standard I have to meet, and I need my voice back to make that work.

Somebody buy me a burrito. I’m hungry.

Don’t celebrate just yet, but something has happened. The State of TN has ordered the closing of Love In Action’s two facilities operating in Memphis and determined they are in continued violation of our state’s licensing regulations. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

The state inspected two facilities in Memphis on Aug. 19 and determined Love In Action International Inc. was providing housing, meals and personal care for mentally ill patients without a license, according to a subsequent letter to the organization from the Department of Mental Health.

The department gave Love In Action until Sept. 23 to cease operation of the facilities and apply for a state license.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this as time moves on myself, but for now I can say with great certainty that Love In Action is going the “martyr route” with their whole defense. “Oh look at us! We are being persecuted for our religious beliefs by these homosexuals and our government!”

I have news for you guys: you’re not Jesus Christ, you don’t even deserve to walk in his shoes because, at the end of it all, you’re using his teachings as an excuse to do things which you know are completely wrong. You lie. You dispense medication to patients without a license. You purposefully seek to hide the truth of who you are in order to gain some shallow form of acceptance from people who will never fully accept you. You even, allegedly, take money from insurance companies to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars to provide something which you aren’t licensed to provide.

You give Christianity a bad name, and the only thing of which anyone should ever be ashamed is of devoting themselves to your sadly misguided journeys into faith.

If I were a Christian, I’d be doing everything I could right now to make sure people in positions of authority knew that what Love In Action does is not ministry. It’s therapy, it always was therapy, and it always will be no matter what words you change on your website and in your pamphlets to make people think it isn’t.

But you’ll just shut down here and reopen somewhere else and keep running until you’ve run out of ideas and supporters.

I don’t think anyone involved with Love In Action is a bad person, but good people often do bad things. When they do them in the name of Jesus Christ, they insult and demean worshippers the world over. The purity of your motives is not in question: it’s the purity of your actions.

Usually I’m good about updating for an hour when I get home from something like CMJ. However, this week I am bookended. I have a long drive for work and I have to take off like right now. To make matters worse, I have laryngitis. On a positive note, CMJ was both amazing and horrific — I had the best and the worst of times all at once. New York Effin City, y’all.

Anyways, I gotta run. I’m panicking.

Apparently, among the laundry list of problems that explain the core of Love In Action’s inability to become licensed, is serious medical malfeasance. I have learned today that Love In Action has been dispensing medication to people with mental illnesses, and the Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities is none too happy about this. A story should be forthcoming regarding all of the potentially damaging stuff facing Love In Action, but inevitably it comes down to a couple of minor bullet points:

• Potential insurance fraud
• Prescribing medication without a license

These are very serious matters of which the state has become aware. The big fear among those of us who rallied for attention to their practices is that Love In Action may be trying to martyr itself by ignoring the state’s demand for compliance. It reminds me of an old joke I’ve heard a dozen or more times (with sincere apologies to those recovering from Hurricane Katrina, this joke is not aimed at you in any way):

A man is stuck in his house when a flash flood roars through his neighborhood. The water rises up the porch. A neighbor comes by with a canoe and says, “Need a ride?” The man replies, “No thanks. God will take care of me.” The man in the canoe paddles away. The water rises up the second story of the house, and the man is standing in his second-story window. A large boat comes by, and the captain offers, “Would you like me to get you out of here?” The man replies, “No thanks, God will take care of me.” The flood water soon rises to the top of the house. The man is left standing on the roof. A helicopter hovers over him. The pilot offers to lower a ladder down and rescue him, but the man still says, “No thanks. I know God will save me.” The man drowns, and when he gets to heaven, he says, “God, why didn’t you save me?” God replies, “What do you mean? I sent two boats and a helicopter for you.”

Well, this will be my last update for a few days. I’m headed off to the great wilds of New York City for the CMJ Music Marathon to get my palms greased, raked over the coals by trustafarian indie rockers, hang out with old friends, and talk shop. Other than Living Better Electrically, Lucero, Mary Lou Lord, Little Brother and !!! (Chk-Chk-Chk), I have no earthly idea what else I’m seeing. Suffice if to say that I’m flying by the seat of my drawers here. Anyways, if you’re going to be at CMJ, you can send me an email and let me know. Maybe we’ll hook up at one of the (gasp) THREE panels I’m now scheduled on.

I’m like…wait…you mean, someone gives a crap what I have to say about music blogging?

Anyways, you kids behave yourselves and go get some Lemongrass Tofu at Pho Hoa Binh while I’m away. Keep it real, nahh mean?

According to a confidential source, an investigation started in early July by the Tennessee Department of Health has yielded the decision that Love In Action is in continued violation of the State of TN Dept. of Health’s facility licensing requirements. In two strongly worded letters issued to Love In Action, the department is demanding that the facility at 4780 Yale Rd. become compliant with the State of Tennessee’s licensing requirements or face a state ordered closure of their facility. A first letter sent to the facility by the department was returned unanswered by Love In Action. A second letter demanding full compliance grants the facility until this coming Thursday, September 15th to fulfill their licensing obligations or face mandatory shutdown of the facility. More information on this developing story as it becomes available.

UPDATE: Here is a copy of the review from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities (DMHDD) (With Thanks To QAC and Peterson Toscano)

DMHDD staff met with Mr. John Smid, Executive Director of Love In Action, on August 19, 2005. Based on the meeting, it was determined that Love In Action is operating two unlicensed mental health supportive living facilities in Memphis.

In accordance with DMHDD’s licensure procedures, a certified letter was sent to Mr. Smid. The letter dated August 23, 2005, stated licensure staff’s determination that Love In Action was operating two unlicensed facilities. The letter further stated that he must stop operating the homes within seven (7) days of receiving the letter, or apply for a license within the same time period.

The Department’s Office of Licensure determines the seven day period based on the date the organization receives the letter. This is verified by return receipt from the Post Office. Licensure did not receive a return receipt from the post office, so another letter was sent Thursday, September 8th.

If Mr. Smid does not respond by September 15th, licensure staff will revisit Love In Action, to determine if the agency is still operating the two homes. If the homes are still operating, licensure will recommend to the Department’s Commissioner that a cease and desist order be issued to Love In Action, in accordance with DMHDD Licensure Law.

Rachel Lassiter
Deputy Press Secretary
Governor’s Communications Office

Did you miss me? I missed you, and it was all thanks to a darned blackout in Los Angeles where my WONDERFUL hosting company, Dreamhost, is located. Comparatively, my downtime of about two hours was a blessing compared to the headaches Los Angelinos are wrapped up in right now. Some dude in Burbank was installing an automatic transmission system, you know…regular stuff that we all do. He accidentally cut and then connected the red wire to the green wire and VOOM, just like that, “Honey, I blew up the San Fernando Valley!” It was like a scene from a bad Hollywood film, apparently, as 50 percent of the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water’s customers lost power in a cascade of darkness.

Luckily for everyone, no terrorists were involved in this debacle, leading to speculation amongst Los Angelinos that someone had figured out a clever way to give thousands of their co-workers the rest of the afternoon off.

Ok, talk amongst yourselves. I got stuff to do, k? But don’t bother with checking your MySpace for the thousandth time today because guess what?!? YEP, you guessed it — Los Angeles, baby.

Well, it finally happened. eBay is finalizing an agreement to purchase the voice call over internet provider Skype for between $2.6bn abd $4.1bn depending on who you ask. Either way, that’s a big Twinkie. The hope, from eBay’s standpoint, is to strengthen the relationships of their enormous online community by providing a better way of communicating between buyers and sellers that would, presumably, increase the trust factor of their marketplace. Go here to read the full story. There is another earlier story located here on DesignTechnica.

What does this mean for users of both eBay and Skype? I think it’s going to make the cost of eBay’s already increasing seller fees go up further. I don’t think I’m going to trust someone more just because I can place a call to them using Skype. It’s not a replacement for reading feedback, and I’ll be interested to see where this goes. Thoughts or comments?

As a young person, I was enamored with the show Press Your Luck. Nobody likes being sick, but there were days where I was so happy to be home sick from school, nothing mattered besides the chance to watch another episode. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember an episode where a guy kept winning and winning and there seemed to be no end in sight! If you were at home watching, you saw what looked like an ordinary episode with a very lucky contestant. The reality: the fix was in, and the producers at CBS never knew what hit them until it was far too late. Someone (maybe Goldenfiddle?) pointed me towards this story about the Press Your Luck incident involving Michael Larsen, the contestant who magically avoided all whammies and played the game to unbeatable perfection — to the tune of $110,237, an unheard of amount on a game show such as this. Go read it — it doesn’t have a happy ending, but what story about cheating the system ever does?