Reality

In the first few years of the last decade, a lot of assumptions were made about aging baby boomers, their parents, their children, and their housing needs. Boomers would begin downsizing as soon as the children flew the coop, starting at about 55. Boomers would move to communities filled with their own kind. Elderly parents would be accommodated in a casita — a part of the house — until they needed continuing care. The casita would then be converted to a crafts room.

This weekend a group of men will gather at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary to how learn to throw a spiral, make a three-point shot and hit a long ball — and to resist homosexual urges. Courage, a Catholic group that encourages people with same-sex attraction to remain celibate, is holding its 13th annual sports camp in which "men physically compete on the field while enriching their souls through a daily regimen of prayer, confessions, mass, and the Liturgy of the Hours," according to the group's website.

LAST MONDAY night, nearly a million American viewers tuned in for the season 4 premiere of "RuPaul's Drag Race. " The extra-sassy show is a reality-based elimination, a madcap mash-up of "Project Runway" and "America's Next Top Model. " Only the competitors are men who dress like women - and who survive or get eliminated by lip syncing "for their lives. " Last Monday's viewership was a 50 percent increase over season 3's first episode and set a record for the lil' Logo channel (163 on your Comcast dial)

Philly is a reality-show nexus and all, but what were the chances of Tuesday's on-the-street meetup of Reid Rosenthal , the Rittenhouse Square Realtor who was booted off The Bachelorette a year ago, and Ashley Hebert , the University of Pennsylvania dental student who was shown the door Monday night on The Bachelor ? No sparks flew in what Rosenthal described as a random encounter outside the 10 Rittenhouse high-rise on 18th Street near Walnut, where he was showing a condo.

AS A 42-YEAR-OLD male whose belly is fattening while his hair is thinning, I wanted to tell you that your article purporting to show a link between middle-age weight gain and dementia is a load of bunk. And if you don't believe me, just ask my cat Abraham Lincoln, who read the article to me while we played No Limit Hold-'em with the Martians from next door. Mike Ginsberg, Philadelphia

I'M SICK of people griping and moaning about how the police are so unfair and crying racism when there are police shootings, or they've arrested their poor little Johnny. But what are police supposed to do when Johnny is shooting at them, robbing an elderly person for some weed, or victimizing a law-abiding citizen? Get real. Bhoke S. Lumumba Philadelphia

NEW YORK - There's a new reality show star on the tube Sunday night. Suehaila Amen doesn't drink, prays daily, and wears a head scarf in public to preserve her modesty. I don't think we're at the Jersey Shore anymore, Snooki. Suehaila is one of the cast members of TLC's new series All-American Muslim . While most of the women on the show, set in Dearborn, Mich., choose to wear the hijab (traditional scarf), there are some startling exceptions. Glamorous blonde Nina Bazzi, for instance, appears to have wandered over from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills set by mistake.

NEW ORLEANS - Alligator hunters, raccoon wranglers, and crawfish catchers in Louisiana's critter-filled swamps and bayous are increasingly common on television. Since the introduction of the History Channel's wildly popular Swamp People in 2010, roughly a dozen other Louisiana-based reality shows have made their television debuts, among them the Travel Channel's Girls, Guns and Gators , CMT's Crawfish Cowboys , and the Discovery Channel's Ragin' Cajuns . The reason for the boom in Louisiana-based reality TV is twofold, said the state's lieutenant governor, Jay Dardenne.

Larry Kane is a veteran anchor and author This is a time for memories, mostly the individual flashbacks of the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11: where we were, what we were thinking, the visual recollections. Rushing in to work, headed south on I-95 in the direction of Independence Mall, I was stunned at the traffic headed north. A rush-hour traffic jam, with people heading home at 9:30 in the morning? It was an attempt to escape, caused by fear - fear of what might come next.

On Feb. 28 Ellen Goodman never spoke truer words than when she stated "a woman can take RU 486 (an abortifacient) without knowing whether she is pregnant . . . the moral questions would be easy . . . to avoid. " It has always been that way, Ms. Goodman. The rich can live selfish, opulent lives and never have to face the moral question of their responsibilities to humanity as long as they never see the ghetto. But that doesn't change the reality of the existence of poverty. You're right, not being able to see unborn humans makes it easy for some to avoid the moral question of their destruction.

At the risk of sounding callous, my first reaction at hearing that Philadelphia's Sunoco refinery might close was excitement. Yes, it would mean job losses, as many as 900 good blue-collar positions, which are all too rare in this city in the first place. Yet all I could think about was the potential. Imagine 1,400 riverfront acres - now given over to hideous distillation towers and storage tanks - cleaned up and converted into something spectacular. Parkland. A second Navy Yard.

You may not recognize the term augmented reality, but you've probably already benefited from the concept: enhancing the real world with digital information. That bright-yellow line on the football field showing how far to a first down? At times you may wish your team's players could see it. Sadly, it's visible only on a TV monitor. With the right equipment, you may someday be able to see digital overlays everywhere you look. A name for that face you can't quite recognize.

DANNY BRIERE is not normally a participant in the Flyers' pregame, two-touch soccer warmup drill in the bowels of an arena, but he proved on Sunday afternoon that his foot-eye coordination is second to none. Briere clearly kicked a puck past Martin Brodeur just 2:13 into overtime, delivering what many thought was the Flyers' first home playoff overtime game-winner since June 2, 2010. They had lost three home overtime playoff games in a row, including Chicago's Stanley Cup-clinching win in Game 6 in 2010.

The Inquirer is presenting a daily profile of participants in next Sunday's Blue Cross Broad Street Run. See full coverage at www.philly.com/broadstreetrun . Dan and Ron meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 5:30 a.m. at St. John's Hospice, a homeless shelter at 12th and Race Streets. The greeting is always the same. Ron Hayes, 62, who lives in the shelter, will nod and say, "Coach. " Dan Colameco, 27, who works with autistic students at Radnor High School, will smile and say, "Mr. Hayes.

Who: Reality regular on MTV. Started with season one of "Road Rules" ('95), now in the final throes of "The Challenge: Battle of the Exes," Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Age: 40. From: Folcroft. Now: Los Angeles. Reality resume: After "Road Rules," he "hosted a couple of seasons for 'The Challenge,' competed in 'Battle of the Sexes 2,' 'The Gauntlet 2,' 'Real World vs. Road Rules,' 'The Duel 2,' " and hosted a bunch of after-shows, including "The Real World: Brooklyn.

We've seen a lot of housewives on TV - desperate, mobbed up, real - and nowVH1 is throwing a new batch into the fishbowl. "Hollywood Exes," one-hour series airing this summer will star the ex-wives of Eddie Murphy, Prince, R. Kelly, Will Smith and Jose Canseco. The network said that Nicole Murphy, Jessica Canseco, Andrea Kelly, Sheree Fletcher (Smith's ex) and Mayte Garcia (Prince's ex) "want to show the world that they are more than just a trophy wife with a pretty face. " No better way to prove that than star in a reality TV show, right?

Harry Potter. . . . Bella Swan. . . . Katniss Everdeen? If the bespectacled boy wizard of the Harry Potter books and films and the sulky high schooler-turned-vampire-wife of the Twilight Saga have long been imprinted in the collective consciousness, is it now time for the teenage heroine of The Hunger Games to join them? With the Suzanne Collins book perched atop the children's and young-adult best-seller lists pretty much since its publication in late 2008, and with advance ticket sales for the $100 million Lionsgate film adaptation - opening at Friday - outpacing the inaugural Harry Potter, there are strong indications that Ms. Everdeen is indeed heading for that rarefied realm of pop iconography.

No one, it seems, can escape the death of culture: Reality TV can't be stopped. No one. Not even Clint Eastwood . The film artist's wife, Dina , and two daughters, Morgan , 15, and Francesca , 18, will star in a new E! reality show called Mrs. Eastwood & Company . The show, set to premiere May 20, will feature Dina's labors to promote Overtone , a six-man a cappella group she plans to move from South Africa to the Eastwoods' California manse.

Destiny is a funny thing. From Day 1 to Day 24 - and the months before and after a four-week shoot in Ghana - Deron Albright's first feature film, The Destiny of Lesser Animals , appeared doomed. "It was just the relentlessness of the challenges," said Albright, 42, of Narberth, a director and associate professor of film at St. Joseph's University. "Any one given bad day is doable. This was day upon day. . . . It has been an exhausting process. " On more than one occasion, everyone involved - from the L.A. cameraman who slept on Albright's couch to the lead actor who paid his own airfare to Ghana - wondered whether the film four years in the making would ever see the big screen.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - The first instinct is to doubt. And that is understandable. When the subject is injuries and the messenger is a professional sports team, you can find yourself longing for the transparency of an organization like the CIA. But you can also find yourself caught up in conspiracy theories that don't mean a thing. Because when you get right down to it, we already have the information we need. One week into Grapefruit League play, Chase Utley has yet to participate in a game.