Happy Post-Disney Halloween!

Or Happy Holidays, if you're as cranky as I am.

Trick or treating tonight was fun. My 10 year-old girl was gypsy; my eight-year-old girl was a kitty; my twin boys were Zorro and the Human Torch, respectively. My two-year old stayed home after he refused to put on his lion costume. He ate a lot of candy anyway. Like he didn't eat enough junk food over the past three days.

Getting back into real life after a vacation just sucks out loud. Everything's piled up. The real world is mad at you for leaving. And to top it off, the Moist Board is down, and my hosting service hasn't fixed it. I'm still working on it, guys. We'll get there. (UPDATE: It's up! Hooray!) 

Disney's California Adventure was a very clean, fun amusement park, but it's no Disneyland. The rides are a bit more aggressive - they have a genuine roller coaster, for instance, which is something Disneyland doesn't really have. And no, Space Mountain doesn't count - it's cool, but if you turned the lights on, there wouldn't be much to recommend it. There isn't even a decent drop off, for heaven's sake! Compared to California Screamin', it's a walk in the park. 

The water ride was fun; I really liked Tower of Terror, and Soaring Over California was a revelation. It may be the best ride in either park. One of my twins hated it, though. He also hated Star Tours. He feels ripped off by simulators. He wants to move, dag nab it!

Now, actually, I understand why Disneyland remains essentially static. Nobody wants to see a drastic update. It's the nostalgia that sells it, so even though the technology is somewhat stale and the thrill rides aren't there, nobody complains. All the new stuff is over at California Adventure, and nobody cares. Magic Mountain, the other big amusement park I frequented growing up in So Cal, is closing down, despite its bigger and bettere thrill rides year after year after year. You want roller coasters with big drops and loop-de-loops? Go to Primm, Nevada and don't bother with Disney. That'll keep the lines shorter at Pirates of the Caribbean. 

That's all for now. When I can get back in teh swing of things, I'll get more verbose. Right now, all I can think about is the seeming eternity before I get another vacation again.

Love and Guts

From Act XVI of the Prometheus Melting Cycle

PROMETHEUS:

Ah, Drucilla.

So you're dead.

So what!

Do you want to watch me cry?

Do you need to hear me scream?

Dead men tell no tales, fella.

Neither do dead chicks.

And, my fine feathered friend, you are as dead as they come.

(Screaming) DRUCILLA!!

When you died, my heart died with you.

Now I tear out my heart as you tore out my soul!

(He reaches into his chest and pulls out a hamburger smothered in ketchup.)

How my love consumes me.

Now I consume my love!

(He takes a big chaw out of the burger and spits it out. He reaches into his vest pocket and produces a bottle of French's yellow mustard.)

Now I consume my love with a whole mess of mustard!

(He smothers the burger in mustard and eats– the whole thing. Then he laughs maniacally, food still in his mouth.)

My achy breaky heart now rests in my lower intestine.

All it needs is you, my Drucilla.

You and I - must become one.

Our hearts will digest together.

(He smothers the dead woman in mustard. Before he can eat her, he screams:)

Oh, my leg!

(Grabbing his leg, he keels over and dies.)

Lost Disneyland Rides

The vacation reaches its apex tomorrow, when we descend on the Disneyland resort for a second time, this time beginning at Disney’s California Adventure. I’ve never been there, and I’m a little concerned about it. I’m an old dog, and I’m not sure if you can teach me new Disney tricks. Remember, I’m the one still pining for “Journey Through Inner Space,” which is the ride that “Star Tours” replaced.

What? You don’t remember “Journey Through Inner Space?”

That’s the ride where you get shrunk down to the size of an atom. It wasn’t a trick, because you could see a lot of really little people going through a little tube, which proves that actual shrinking was taking place. How could they fake something like that? Case closed.

Actually, it was a pretty sorry ride, but my sister said it was a great make out ride, because you were riding for so long in those people-mover things in the dark. I was too much of a geek to make use of that particular feature, but I’m sure it was nice.

I also remember “America Sings,” a rotating animatronics show where various and sundry animals performed the history of the country in song, and a weasel popped up at the end of everything. It was way lame, but our family went on it every time. And all those animals are still working – they were just transferred over to Splash Mountain, so no harm done.

Gone but not forgotten is the classic “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” where a creepy Abe Lincoln robot was exhumed every few minutes to recite the Gettysburg Address. Yikes. Definitely not an E-Ticket ride.

Incidentally. Disneyland is much better without E-Tickets, but I remember the E-Ticket days well. All the good rides were E-Tickets, and you would go through your ticket book and use up all the E’s as fast as you can. You would go home with a ticket book still filled with the A, B,C and D’s. The best D ticket ride was the Autopia, which kept breaking down on Friday. The only A ticket ride was the stupid trolley up Main Street.

I even recall the fad attractions that have come and gone over the years. There was Videopolis, a big 80’s style dance place that took up all the area where Toon Town is now. Nobody mourns its exit, but it shall live forever in a cluttered, otherwise useless portion of my brain.

Everything else remains constant. There are minor tweaks, too – the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse is now the Tarzan Treehouse and is still just as much of a waste of time, and Pirates of the Carribbean, despite a few Jack Sparrow tweaks, is 90% the same. Space Mountain was shut down for years for a revamping, but other than it being a little darker, I couldn’t tell the difference. The Haunted Mansion was decked out for the Nightmare Before Christmas, which was a welcome change. They probably ought to update it permanently.

Or not.

Actually, I don’t think anyone really wants to see Disneyland pulled into the 21st Century. It remains surprisingly consistent, a welcome link to days gone by. And as my own children discover it for themselves, they’ll probably be as resistant to change as I am.

Because in the heart of every child is a future geezer ready to yell “Hey, kids! Get off my lawn!”

True Art

The rage has subsided. Disneyland was delightful. It's amazing how little it's really changed over the years. (I miss the Journey Through Inner Space, though, but who doesn't?) We finished the day and then drove three and a half hours north up to my other sister's house. I don't intend to do any property damage up here, but the day is young.

We arrived at about two in the morning last night. All the girls are sleeping in one room, and all the boys are sleeping in another. My wife and I have taken over my thirteen-year-old niece's room, which provides very comfortable but non-manly accommodations. (Pink walls covered with Zac Efron pinups. Yowsa!)

Anyway, we woke up this morning, and my wife was deeply touched by a quote my niece had written on a piece of paper and taped to the wall. It's so majestic, so profound, so transcendently beautiful, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to share it with you.

Here's what it says:

"Sometimes, you don't know what you are drawing... until you've finished. And sometimes, even then you still don't know what you drew. That is true art."

She's right. She couldn't be more right. If she were any more right, the galaxy would fold in on itself and ignite the universe in a bonfire of ethereal splednor. (I meant to write "splendor," but sometimes, you don't know what you're writing until you're finished. And sometimes, even then...)

See? After I started drawing, I thought this was going to be a washing machine. Now I don't know what the hell it is.

LA Traffic Makes Me Violent

After about fifteen minutes on a Los Angeles freeway, I'm about ready to pound a paperweight into the side of my skull.

I grew up in this stinking city, for the love of Imelda Marcos. Every time I come back, I expect to be awash in nostalgia, reflecting on the renewed promise of the City of theAngels by the sea.

And then I sit on the 101 for about six months to go three miles.

I just don't understand how anyone can live like that. I don't understand how I used to live like that. And I did. I loved this city. I thought I would never leave. Then I left, and every time I come back, I want to club a baby seal over the head with a baseball bat.

I have traffic anger issues.

We went to the California Science Center this afternoon, and the kids had fun, except my two year old decided he wanted to take the elevator by himself. Then we went to The Grove, so my girls could go to the American Girl store, aND THEN WE DROVE FOR ABOUT AN HOUR AND A HALF TO GO 15 MILES TO MY SISTER'S HOUSE, AFTER WHICH I SCRAPED UP MY MINIVAN ON THE SIDE OF HER GARAGE.

My nephew is watching me write this, and he thinks I'm disturbed. He's damn right. He's also offended that I just typed the word "damn." Now he's reading this out loud over my shoulder. I think I will type dirty words and see if he will say them. Except now he's stopped reading this and is just laughing.

I'm going to go enjoy my vacation now. I think there's a paperweight in the bathroom.

How I Killed Howard Hughes

My blogging may be a bit more inconsistent over the next few days, as we’re traveling as a family. The young’uns have no school next Monday and Tuesday, so we’re yanking ‘em out early to get in a mini-vacation. If you haven’t spent twelve hours in a car with five young children, then you haven’t lived!

Right now, we're mid-journey. I'm writing this from the belly of the beast - the fifth floor of the Annie Oakley tower in the Buffalo Bill Hotel – Primm, Nevada. Classy joint. It's only $37 a night, and, believe me, it’s worth every penny, almost.

We’re driving down to Los Angeles to visit family and spend a couple of days at Disneyland. (I also have some secret meetings at the Black Tower - don't tell Languatron!) We’d promised our children we’d do this long before the wildfires broke out – so far, no one in our family is at risk, and the blaze may actually keep the Disney crowds small. (That’s probably too heartless to mention, but I’d by lying if I said we hadn’t thought of that.)

I don’t know that there’s much to say about the wildfires that hasn’t been said, except that those who blame these on global warming or whatnot ought to go soak their heads. I grew up with Santa Ana wind-fueled wildfires every year, and some were pretty nasty. Nature has been burning that spot of earth for millennia, regardless of property values. To think this is some kind of new or remarkable phenomenon is to be willfully ignorant.

Anyway, I've made the journey from SLC to LA more times than I can count. The summer of '87, Foodleking and I made the 700+ mile drive about every other weekend. As a kid, the family used to trek up to the Wasatch Front to visit both sets of grandparents. We’d always stop over either in Vegas or St. George. I was passing this info along to my kids as we ate dinner at the Cedar City IHop.

I told them how their grandfather, like many Mormons of his era, used to work for Howard Hughes, and that meant he’d spent some time seeing the casino business up close and personal. I reminisced about how, as a teenager, he walked me through the Desert Inn and pointed out all the one-way mirrors above the Blackjack tables where thugs spied on all the players to catch card counters. He demonstrated in exquisite detail why the house always wins, and that all the bright lights of Vegas weren’t paid for by casinos that lose money.

Then my wife reminded me of another Howard Hughes story, which made the kids laugh out loud. It’s one of my earliest memories. It’s certainly the earliest of my memories that involves poop.

The year was 1972. I was about three and a half years old. My father, for reasons I couldn’t possibly fathom, brought the whole family to Florida and, since he was working for Howard Hughes at the time, he was able to finagle the use of Howard Hughes’ private Florida residence for the duration of our stay.

I don’t remember much about the house except that I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. (Hughes had never touched anything in it, either – word was, he’d never even been there. And after my visit, I made sure he never would be.) The one thing I do remember, however, was the large, elegant indoor swimming pool.

I wasn’t yet able to swim, so my brother and I just waded into the water from the shallow end. We played quite cheerfully, and my brother, three years my senior, was a treasure trove of information. He told me of many things that day, but the lesson that made the biggest difference was his explanation of the wonders of chlorine, and how you could pee in a pool all day long if you wanted to, because the chlorine in pool water made the pee magically disappear.

Well, I was only three, but I was a prodigy when it came to the rules of logic. And in my mind, everything that happened in a bathroom was all part of the same miracle of life. And if chlorine could work wonders on #1, just imagine what it could do on #2?

That’s why I took a dump in Howard Hughes’ pool.

The log I dropped floated aimlessly out into the water, and I seem to recall wondering why I could still see it. Shouldn’t the chlorine have vaporized it by now? I asked myself. Oh, well. I can’t be bothered. Who wants to play Marco Polo?

It wasn’t until a few hours later that the turd was discovered, and the whole world turned upside down. I remember seeing a man with a net fishing the thing out of the water. I remember hushed voices and a general sense of panic. Nobody was wearing a nuclear fallout suit a la Bill Murray in Caddyshack, but the pool was drained and the whole place scrubbed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the house was summarily burned to the ground the day after we left.

And that is how my life began.

Is it a coincidence that Howard Hughes died just a few years later, pathologically obsessed with microscopic germs? Could it have been my bowels that brought down the billionaire?

Make of it what you will. As for me, I don’t believe in coincidences.

I believe in poop.

A VERY MANLY POST

All right, wusses. Nothing sissified today. Behold! Today is
a celebration of all things MANLY.

And I am a MANLY MAN.

How manly? Let me count the ways. (Although this is, by no means, a comprehensive list.)

I WENT BUNGEE JUMPING ONCE.

Actually, I jumped three times in succession, and the third time was the hardest. Because unlike, say, a roller coaster or some other run-of-the-mill thrill, the anticipatory fear of bungee jumping pales in comparison to the actual experience. You spend an interminable amount of time at the top of the platform trying to talk yourself into it and then, against all better judgment, you jump. And then you’re sure you’re going to die.

Then you reach the bottom and you’re yanked all the way back up again, which gives you another chance to wet yourself.

But I’m manly. So my britches stayed dry.

I MADE OUT WITH SOME RANDOM CHICK I DIDN'T KNOW.

It was ten minutes after I met her – and before I knew her name. How manly is that?

We were at this weird, artsy poetry reading. I got up and did some bizarre Stallion Cornell rant, and she was laughing her head off. So I took the occasion to make my move, and before you knew it, we were smooching like there’s no tomorrow.

Unfortunately, there was a tomorrow, in which I took her out on a real date, where I learned her name - which I’ve forgotten – and we discovered we didn’t like each other much. She was turned off by the fact that I was a Republican, and I was turned off by the fact that she was kind of a skank.

I FATHERED TWINS.

You don’t get much more manly than that. My wife and I went in for the first ultrasound, and the nurse running the thing said “Are you in here for any special reason?”

We both panicked, thinking something was wrong. “No,” we said. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m seeing two heads,” the nurse replied.

My wife says her first thought was “Aaaargh! My baby has two heads!"

I WAS A SOCCER COACH.

I didn’t mean to be. But when I went to the orientation meeting, there was no one else there from my daughter’s team to take the equipment, so they made me “responsible” for it. Which meant I was the de facto coach, despite the fact that soccer makes me itch.

We lost every game we played. But in a totally manly way!

I KAYAKED FOR 17 MILES.

There are 17 miles of coastline along northern Kauai that are completely inaccessible by land. The only way to see it is to take a motorboat (good plan) or a sea kayak (less good plan.) My wife and I kayaked together in a two-person kayak for six hours straight. It ate up two days of our vacation: one day because of the hard-slog kayaking, and one day of her not speaking to me because of all my belligerent swearing, which I thought she couldn’t hear. Apparently, she could, and she was displeased.

I’m a very manly swearer.

I FINISHED A 10K RACE.

I’d like to say I ran a 10K race, but that’s not entirely accurate. It was the official state race on Pioneer Day through Downtown Salt Lake City, and I participated in it with my more athletically-inclined wife. I started off running with the big boys, and for about three miles, I kept pace. Then I started to cramp up. Pretty soon I was walking. I walked for about ten minutes before my wife caught up with me, which shamed me back into running. I would start walking again when I put enough distance between us, but I had to make sure I stayed ahead of my wife. I beat her by about thirty seconds.

I did OK, though! I came in 85th!

(Out of the 95 people in my age group.)

There’s more I could tell you. I eat like crap. I fart with impunity. I fear laundry. I kick things. I wear my sunglasses at night. I use duct tape. I’ve tiled my own bathrooms. I could go on and on and on. But I won’t, because it’s not the manly thing to do.

And I’m so freaking manly, it’s not even funny.

I got married in a kilt.

Lonely at the Top

So nobody wants to read a blog post about the intricacies of Utah voucher legislation.

Fine.

Instead, here is a blog post with a vampire in it. He is not a mega gay vampire like the kind that live in Forks, Washington and make moony eyes at teenage girls when they should be sucking their blood. I’m talking about a real, hard-core vampire, a kick-butt, take no prisoners kind of vampire who really knows how to rock.

Keith Richards.

Now I have no proof that Keith is an actual vampire. But I do know that he’s undead. He no longer has an ounce of his own blood. I don’t what that stuff is that runs through his collapsed veins nowadays – some combination of smack and prune juice, most likely – but he’s definitely not alive in the same sense that, say Oprah Winfrey or Jeff Goldblum is alive. He’s not even alive in the way that Elvis is alive, because people still believe Elvis is alive, but nobody who looks at Keef can possibly think he is alive, even though Elvis is buried and Keith isn't, although he probably should be.

Keith is really my favorite Rolling Stone; indeed, the only Stone that matters. When I was doing the show Fame with the Kids of the Century, who I have mentioned previously, everyone’s parents bought ad space to say “Good luck!” to their children in the program. My parents didn't. Instead, I took out a full page ad with a picture of Keith Richards that said “Good luck, Keith,” because I figured if anyone needed good luck, it was Keith Richards.

I mean, look at him. He needed it then, and he definitely needs it now.



The ad cost eighty dollars, which was pretty much my annual salary back then. It was still worth it.

I really didn’t discover the Stones until late into my teens. Initially, it wasn’t Keith who interested me – it was Mick. I first saw Mick Jagger perform at Live Aid on July 13, 1985.

This is exactly what it looked like:



I was mesmerized. He was a huge hit, despite being the ugliest, strangest thing I had ever seen. (Keith, incidentally, performed at Live Aid, too. He dropped his acoustic guitar on the ground right in the middle of "Blowing in the Wind." Seriously, if I didn't know better, I'd have said he was drunk.)

Anyway, when I saw Mick prancing about, I was exceedingly heartened, because I knew, instantly, that I had finally found a worthy role model for my own boogie skills. See, I’ve never been much of a dancer.

Actually, that’s being kind. I’m a wretched, horrific dancer.

In all my singing-and-dancing stuff growing up, they always used me as scenery, like a tree or something. As one choreographer put it, when it comes to my dancing, there just aren’t enough back rows.

But on July 13, 1985, in front of the whole world, there was Mick Jagger, flailing like some kind of epileptic eel, and everyone was eating it up. Why couldn’t I do that?

Well, I could. And I did. And I do.

It makes my mother cry.

Back in the 80s, Calabasas High School had a lip-synching contest every year. People dressed up as their favorite rock bands, moved their lips along with the records, and then got their friends to applaud wildly. The top three applause getters got to do an encore, and then a final round of applause determined the winner after that.

Well, I entered the contest as Mick Jagger. Just me. Solo.

This is exactly what I looked like.


Everyone else had a fake band behind them, which means they had enough friends to pack the house and get enough applause to win, or at least to get an encore. Heck, the whole CHS Football Team sang some kind of Dream Team rap that sucked out loud, but they got way more applause than anyone else just by sheer numbers of football groupies.

So I didn’t win. But, miraculously, I got an encore.

I started out with a song from Mick’s then-recently released solo album, She’s the Boss. My first number was a hardcore, straight ahead rock-and-roller called "Lonely at the Top," the tune Mick opened with at Live Aid. I was dressed just as he was back then, and, like him, I flung my shirt here, there, and everywhere. I flailed and ran and boogied and strutted and rooster-tailed, gesticulated, reticulated and granulated my way to just enough applause to get the number three encore slot.

And it was in the encore where I had my true brush with infamy.

I picked, as my encore, a ballad from She’s the Boss called "Hard Woman." In rehearsal, the teacher in charge of the event told me I was making a big mistake, because nobody singing a ballad had ever won the Lip Synch Contest. I told him to stuff it. I knew what I was doing.

Here's how it went down.

I started out on stage in the fetal position, curled into a ball like a flower ready to bloom.

And the music began to play.

“She’s a… HARD WOMAN to puhlease… And I thawt uhbout lettin’ her knu-ow…”

I reached, ever so gracefully, upward, upward, like a dying swan wilting in the noonday sun…

“She’s a… TUFF LADAH tah LEAVE… And I thawt uhbout lettin’ her gu-o…”

I was billowing now, all atwitter, fluttering in the imaginary breeze, yearning, soaring, or perhaps suffering some sort of seizure…

“She’s a HARD LADAH…TUFF COOKAH… AH GOT TA SAY GOODBAH…”

On my feet now. Reaching. Pleading. Flarging. Mincing with all my might.

And peeling off my purple unitard.

Did I mention I was wearing a purple unitard? Well, I was. I had thrown off all my other clothes in my first number. The unitard was all that was left.

But not for long.

I peeled it down to my shoulders.

The crowd went wild.

“I’m uhLOWN at LAYAYAST… But SOMETHIN’ INSIDE UH ME KNOWOWS… I coulda LOVED IN VEYN FOR A THOWSIN’ YEAUHS… I HAD TO LET HERRRR GU-OWWW!”

The air was electric. I was no dummy; I knew what they wanted.

So I peeled it down to my chest.

Pandemonium.

The girls all shrieked! (I like to think it was out of delight, not horror.)

Then I peeled it down to my stomach.

Then to my waist.

And then... and then...

It was pure bedlam. How low could I go? They were putty in my hands. And I was taunting. Always taunting. Do you want to see more? Will I pull it down lower? Will I? WILL I?

WILL I?

No.

I had probably gone too far as it was. They told me afterward that if I’d peeled it down another inch, they’d have turned the lights out on me.

Still, the crowd went nuts. But they went more nuts for the stupid football team, so, sadly, I didn’t win the actual contest. But I think I won a moral victory.

I’ve imitated Mick countless times since then, including at several church functions. Most recently, my Stake President – a bigtime church leader, for those of you non-Mormons out there – watched me sing “Start Me Up” at our stake’s annual Family Fun Day. Don't worry - I changed the last line about what the girl can make a dead man do in order to accommodate Mormon community standards. My stake president seemed to be having a good time until he stormed out in disgust when I made a little rooster tail behind my bum with my fingers. I wasn’t quite sure why that was so offensive.

So I performed it for my family, and my mother told me that the whole thing was offensive, and that it had always been offensive. (Surprisingly, she didn't cry. But she probably wanted to.)

I'm very versatile - I can imitate Keith Richards, too. (That doesn't seem to be as popular.) I also don’t strip very much in public anymore. I’ve been blessed with a body that no one will pay to see naked. But so has Mick Jagger, and he still does it, so I don’t know what I’m so worried about.

If Keith starts stripping, though, we should all be worried.

Explaining Vouchers to an Eight-Year-Old

So I’m driving my daughters to school, and my eight-year-old notices our next-door neighbor’s lawn sign urging a “no” vote on the upcoming voucher initiative. (It’s a bit silly for our neighbors to put up lawn signs, because we live on a cul-de-sac. But I digress.)

My daughter then announces she’s opposed to vouchers, too. So I ask her why.

She says, “Because the money they spend on a voucher should be spent in a public school instead.”

I then say that vouchers will actually mean more money for public schools, not less. She looks at me like I’m brain damaged. So I proceed to explain the economics, which, granted, are a little confusing, especially to the elementary school set. And at the end of the exchange, she remains entirely convinced she’s taken the right position, whereas I’m suddenly filled with doubt.

Here’s a general approximation of the discussion.

“Your school gets about $7,000 from the state of Utah because you go there,” I explain.

“$7,000?” she repeats. “That’s a lot!”

It’s actually the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation, but I don’t tell her that.

I go on. “Under a voucher law, if you want to go to a private school, then the state would give the private school some of that $7,000 to help pay for it.”

“I don’t want to go to a private school,” she says. “I like my school.”

“Yes, I know,” I say, “but public schools aren’t always the best school for everyone.”

“Then we should make the public schools better,” she says.

“That’s what vouchers will do,” I tell her.

She crinkles up her nose in disbelief. So I continue to explain myself.

“The most a voucher will be is $3,000,” I say. “That leaves $4,000 extra, which will go to the local public school for every kid that goes to a private school. So then a public school will get $4,000 of money they wouldn’t have gotten without vouchers.”

“But that school would have gotten $7,000 without vouchers,” she says.

“No,” I explain patiently, “They wouldn’t. Because now, if you go to a private school, the public school gets nothing. With vouchers, they get $4,000.”

“So people shouldn’t go to private schools,” she says. “Then the school gets the $7,000, and everybody’s happy.”

Yeah, swell, I thought. You win.

I didn’t press the issue beyond that, but I did pass on what I learned when I spoke to my wife later in the evening. As we talked it over, I came away doubting a lot of my initial assumptions.

In the end, it all comes down to an issue of fixed vs. marginal costs.

Economics 101: Fixed costs are those up-front outlays of capital that don’t change based on the amount of business you do. If I run a donut shop, for instance, the rent or mortgage I pay for the actual building in which I sell my donuts is a fixed cost. My mortgage doesn’t go up if I sell more donuts or down if I sell less. However, the amount of money I spend on donut batter is a marginal cost. If I only sell two donuts, I only have to buy two donuts’ worth of donut batter. If I sell a million donuts, I’m going to have to cough up a lot more dough – i.e. money – to buy dough – i.e. dough.

Are you with me?

Anyway, in my analysis with my daughter, I was treating each student as an additional marginal cost, not a fixed cost. If that’s the case, then vouchers make perfect sense. When each student is only a marginal cost, a school of 100 students that loses half of its student body to private schools funded by a $3,000 voucher would see its total income decline, yet the per-pupil marginal spending would increase dramatically. In this scenario, instead of $7,000 per pupil, the state would be spending $11,000 on each pupil left in the public system.

That’s a slam dunk, right?

It is if the scenario is accurate and students are a wholly marginal cost. But are they?

Not really.

In a typical classroom of thirty students, if you lose, say, three of them to private schools, it’s not likely that you’re going to reduce marginal costs by much of anything. You won’t have to pay as much for paper, textbooks, and raw school supplies, but those costs are essentially trivial when compared to salaries and such, which are fixed costs that make up the bulk of a public school budget. Teachers don’t usually get more or less money if their class size fluctuates by a handful of students. So losing a few students in the margins won’t drive down costs unless you lose enough to eliminate an entire classroom and you can fire a teacher.

Then there’s the fixed cost of the public school facility, which is even harder to downsize. If vouchers mean you have fewer students and you don’t need a classroom, you can’t just sell the history building on eBay. True, you can slow the demand for newer school buildings, but in all these considerations, the number of students becomes an unpredictable, aggregate marginal cost, and it’s very likely that the long-term benefit will only come after a series of painful, short-term adjustments.

But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

Consider two facts that voucher opponents are constantly citing:

1. Utah has the lowest per-pupil public school spending in the nation.
2. Utah’s public school class sizes are among the largest in the nation.

Because of these facts, opponents say, we need to reject vouchers, because they will mean less total income into Utah schools.

That argument is extraordinarily disingenuous.

If those two facts are really the fundamental reasons driving the opposition, then voucher opponents are being willfully stupid. Because while the impact of vouchers will be unpredictable in many ways, there are two areas in which their effect will be immediately and measurably recognizable.

1. Vouchers will increase per-pupil public school spending
2. Vouchers will decrease public school class sizes.
   

Opponents know that, but they hope you haven’t thought it through. They’re betting on voters having no higher level of economic understanding than my eight-year-old.

If recent polls are any indication, the bet is about to pay off.

The whole per-pupil spending argument is a red herring, anyway. Despite the low raw dollar amounts, Utah has some of the best test scores and highest graduation rates in the country. You want your kids attending a school with the highest per pupil spending? Then enroll your kids in a Washington DC inner city school, and pray every day that they don’t get shot.

In the end, I’m probably going to vote for the voucher initiative, even though I think it’s a tepid, lukewarm proposal that won’t make much difference one way or another. But if it weren’t a step in the right direction, its opponents wouldn’t be working so hard into misleading the public to maintain the status quo.

That’s a hard thing to explain to an eight-year-old on the way to school.

Of Bach and Beavis

You might say my mother has a thing for classical music.

All the time growing up, she taught private flute lessons out of our home. All her kids are gone now, but she still teaches. In fact, she has more students now than she’s ever had. Of both my parents, neither of whom is retired despite collecting Social Security, she is easily the busier of the two.

Because of her musical pedigree, she spent an awful lot of time inflicting high culture on her children with varying degrees of success. With me, it didn’t really take, at least as far as classical music was concerned. Given a choice between Beethoven and Mozart, I would hole up in my room and crank up the Rolling Stones, which wasn’t really my mother’s métier. I think she’s forgiven me for that, but I can’t be sure.

However, one vestige of the classical music exposure I received in my youth has survived into my middle age.

I adore PDQ Bach.

For those of you who don’t know him, I quote from his official biography, which can be found in its entirety by clicking here.

In the 17th and 18th centuries the name Bach was synonymous with fine musicmaking: Johann Sebastian, certainly the biggest twig on the family tree, was both preceded and followed by many accomplished and well known musicians, some of whom were in the service of royalty. It is easy to understand, therefore, why the Bach clan was loath to admit the existence of a member who was called a “pimple on the face of music,” “the worst musician ever to have trod organ pedals,” “the most dangerous musician since Nero,” and other things not quite so complimentary. They even started a rumor that P.D.Q. Bach, without a doubt Johann Sebastian’s last and least offspring, was not really a member of the Bach family—the implication being that he was illegitimate, or, even better, an imposter. Although P.D.Q. Bach was born on April 1, 1742 and died on May 5, 1807, the dates on his first tombstone (before he was moved to an unmarked pauper’s grave) were inscribed “1807-1742” in a transparent attempt to make it appear that he could not have been the son of J.S., who died in 1750. Nice try, Bach family—close, but no cigar: some of us, or at least one of us, are not fooled, or at least, is not fooled.

PDQ Bach is actually the alter ego of Peter Schickele, who represents himself as a Professor of Musicology from the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. In reality, Schickele is what you might call the “Weird Al” of classical music, except that Schickele came first and is far more talented.

Mom dragged us to a couple of Schickele’s concerts, which involved the good professor swinging onto the stage from a large rope and conducting such PDQ Bach masterpieces as Concerto for Two Pianos vs. Orchestra, where musicians who commit fouls are put into the penalty box.

Over the years, I’ve picked up most of his recorded stuff. My is Oedipus Tex and Other Choral Calamaties, in which one oratario freatures a Pepsi ad in the middle of it, and another consists entirely of bad jokes put to music. You can listen to a piece of it here.

PDQ Bach is a semi-highbrow guilty pleasure. But I can go way, way lowbrow, too.

I love Beavis and Butthead.

During a very trying time in my life, I took refuge in the antics of these two Icons of Stupidity.

Watching Cornholio still makes me spew milk out of my nose.



My wife, a decent human being, loathes Beavis and Butthead, as all right thinking people should. My children would probably be beaten if they were discovered watching any of this. I probably would be, too. But there it is.

This one isn't mo mother's fault. I can’t imagine her sitting through a Beavis and Butthead episode without having an aneurism.

Defining Christianity

Are Mormons Christians?

With Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy gaining steam, that’s a question that more and more people are asking. To many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the question seems absurd on its face. Look at the name of the church, for crying out loud! Read the Book of Mormon, which proclaims that it is written “to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” Many point to this and other evidences that our faith is centered in Christ and then say to the detractors, “What more do you want?” or, “How can you even ask me that?”

The first time I was asked if I was a Christian was back in Chaparral Elementary School in first or second grade. The irony was that, at my tender young age, I didn’t realize that non-Mormons believed in Jesus, too. I had a lot of Jewish friends, and I knew that they weren’t big fans of Jesus, so it was thrilling to discover that there were other believers in Christ out there. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized that the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians didn’t include me in their number, and it took me until I got on my mission in Scotland to really understand why.

Now, when people ask me that question, I’m a bit more circumspect in my answer.

That’s not to say that I’m in any way reluctant to admit that I believe that Christ is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the only way back to the Father. I believe He was born of a virgin, that He lived a perfect life, that He suffered for my sins, that He died for me on the cross at Calvary, and that He was resurrected and ascended into heaven on the third day. Indeed, I stand with Paul, who proclaimed, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” (Romans 1:16)

Surprisingly, that doesn’t necessarily make me a Christian in the eyes of the world.

There’s an excellent book by an LDS scholar by the name of Stephen E. Robinson titled, appropriately, Are Mormons Christians? I thought it made an airtight, indisputable case for the “yes” answer, so I lent it to a friend of mine who was an evangelical Christian to see if he would find it persuasive. He read it thoroughly and made plenty of insightful notes in the margins, and, in doing so, provided a window into how orthodox Christians see my faith. The result was most illuminating.

Here were some of his comments, lifted verbatim from the margins of my book.

When Christianity came into being, there was already an established religion, Judaism. The Christians couldn’t just go around calling themselves Jews. They had 2 options: change the Jews’ minds on the issues, so the Jews would accept them, or find another name. Otherwise the name “Jew” would have been meaningless.

He’s right, but the early members of the New Testament church probably didn't realize this at first. Those early Christians probably did “just go around calling themselves Jews,” since they saw Jesus as the fulfillment of their religion, not the usurper of it. They also balked at attempts by Paul and others to take the Gospel to the Gentiles. It’s important to note that the members of the New Testament Church were “called Christians first in Antioch.” (Acts 11:26) It’s not a name they chose.

Similarly, nowhere in scripture, ancient or modern, are members of my Church designated as “Mormons.” That name, like the title “Christian,” was initially a derisive term coined by others. When Mormons say “we’re just Christians, like everybody else,” they forget that "everybody else" views much of our theology as extraneous nonsense, like living prophets, restored priesthood authority, and modern revelation.

I wish I’d understood this better back in Scotland. I wasted a bunch of time as a missionary trying to appear acceptable to members of Christian churches with a message that effectively said, “Hey! We’re just like you!”

To which the following answer came back: “Great! Then I’ll stay where I am, thank you very much!”

Look at all the trouble Ann Coulter has recently gotten into for referring to Christians as “perfected Jews.” To a Jew, it seems a bit presumptuous that she gets to define the term “Jew” in a way Jews don’t accept, even though, from a theological perspective, she’s probably right.

Another great quote from the margins:

Most Christians try to build the universal church, not their own sect.

This hasn’t always been so, but it seems to be true today. Protestants and Catholics alike may disagree doctrinally, but most of them view each other as part of the same theological family.

In contrast, we Mormons, who are neither Catholic nor Protestant, are even more exclusive than the churches who refuse to recognize us as part of their ranks. We claim to have “the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Doctrine & Covenants 20:9) and say that all other churches are in various degrees of error and apostasy. Indeed, one Mormon apostle went so far as to say the following:

"Mormonism is Christianity; Christianity is Mormonism; they are one and the same, and they are not to be distinguished from each other in the minutest detail." (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p. 513)

In other words, if you’re not a Mormon, you’re not a Christian. So take that, James Dobson!

With that kind of position, why are we surprised when Dobson and Co. don’t welcome us into the Christian fold with open arms?

More from the margins:

In arguing that Mormonism isn’t a cult, particularly by citing the early church, you are strengthening the argument that, if not a cult, Mormonism is, at least, a new religion – and not a sect of Christianity.

Again, the logic is perfect here, although Mormons would say we’re the same religion as the people in the early Church, and that all you Christians in the intervening years are the ones who have gotten it wrong.

Another good marginal point:

If Mormons had rejected the Council of Nicea when it happened, okay, but 15 centuries later? That’s a little weird.

It certainly is if you define a Christian as someone who accepts the Council fo Nicea. Under that definition, Mormons clearly don’t qualify.

More:

When you claim to be speaking for God to an established religion, if they don’t accept you, have the honesty to say you are of another religion – even if it’s the only true one.

Point taken.

I think he sums it up perfectly with this one:

You forget one thing: we came first. We get to make the rules, buddy.

There it is.

So am I saying Mormons aren’t Christians? Well, it depends on how you define the word. We’re not part of the historical Christian tradition, and we reject almost all of the extra-Biblical creeds and practices that have evolved over the centuries. (We’re big suckers for Christmas, though.)

So if you define Christian with these historical and doctrinal caveats, then Mormons don’t fit the definition.

However, that’s not the definition most people have in mind when they use the word "Christian." Webster’s Dictionary primary definition of Christian is “one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ.” Certainly Mormons – and Catholics and Protestants - qualify under that criteria, no matter who came first or what Bruce R. McConkie says.

And that’s the heart of the matter.

Very few people who hear the statement “Mormons aren’t Christians” are thinking historically or theologically. They just presume Mormons don’t believe in Jesus, and we worship Joseph Smith, or we’ve all got polygamous harems up on Mt. Timpanogos. I’m sadly convinced that some people who make the “Mormons aren’t Christians” accusation understand the theology behind it, but they still accuse while knowing – and hoping – they will be misunderstood.

As for me, I really don’t care whether James Dobson or Billy Graham or the Pope or any other Christian leader thinks I’m a Christian or not. I’m far more concerned with what Jesus Christ thinks of me.

When the time comes, He’ll call me by whatever name He thinks will suit me, and that will be enough.

Ever Been Stabbed?

For the past two years, I’ve been part of a non-profit company called Real Victory, which provides training in a cognitive behavioral model to probationers and parolees in the hopes of getting them to change their ways. I teach a series of six hour-and-a-half-long lessons over the course of six weeks that help people identify the basic principles that drive their behavior. Brigham Young University has been conducting a research study to determine whether or not the training reduces recidivism, and the results that have come in so far are very encouraging.

This has the potential to become a really big deal.

Spending time with people who have run afoul of the law has been a huge eye-opener for me. They are not the scary, snarling monsters I had imagined them to be. For the most part, they’re bright, engaging, and friendly. Yes, they’ve also screwed up their lives with poor decisions, but most of them desperately want straighten up and fly right.

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done.

The national recidivism rate hovers somewhere around 80%, meaning the odds are stacked against these guys, Most of them will likely wind up in jail again. Why? Well, addictions are pretty hard to overcome, especially when you don’t have people around you who want you to stay clean. People who get dumped back out on the street end up going back to the only people they know and trust, and those people are usually the ones who helped them get in trouble in the first place.

There’s not much effective rehabilitation going on out there. The parole system is something of a joke. As one parole officer told me, “They pretend they’ve been good, and we pretend to believe them.”

People can’t just change what they do; they have to change why they do it. They have to change the way they think about themselves and the world around them. And most of these people have a seriously skewed view of the way things really work.

If you doubt that, read on.

In Utah County, where I teach these classes, about 2% of the total population is either in jail, on parole, or on probation.

2%.

Initially, that statistic seemed high to me, because I didn’t personally know anyone being processed through the criminal justice system. 1 out of 50 people are in trouble with the law? Can that be right?

Well, to help illustrate of how warped our perception of reality can be, I get each member of the class to offer a guess as to how many people in Utah County are either incarcerated or on probation and/or parole. I write their answers on the board and ask them to vote on which one they think is the most accurate.

I’ve never had them give me a number lower than 50%.

Usually, the guesses are higher than that. Some go as high as 90%, and nobody bats an eye. When I do the big reveal and tell them what the actual number is, none of them believe it. Then they rationalize it by saying “Well, my number is what it should be – because that’s how many people are doing what I’m doing and just haven’t been caught yet!”

If you think about it, though, it makes sense. The only people they know are people like them. In their world, everyone’s everyone either coming from or going to jail, and it’s almost impossible to imagine things being any other way.

Another question I ask them is how many of them either have been or know anyone who who has been deliberately stabbed. Usually, every hand in the room goes up. That’s just astonishing to me. They’re not living in the same world I am. They’d like to be, but they don’t know how to get there.

Teaching these classes hasn’t been particularly lucrative, but it’s easily the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.

Blind Dates and Beaches

An anonymous “Super Gay” commentator on yesterday’s entry insists you have to be “Mega Gay” to watch the movie Beaches all the way through. He’s only seen the first fifteen minutes, apparently. He’s “Super Gay,” but not “Mega Gay.”

He is also wrong. I have, in fact, seen Beaches, and I remain decidedly heterosexual.

How was this accomplished?

I saw Beaches in the winter of ‘89 in a cabin in Coalville, Utah. It was in the course of the most uncomfortable evening of my entire life – and that dreadful movie was the best part of it.

Some background is necessary.

I returned home from the Scotland Edinburgh Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September of 1989. Actually, to say I returned “home” is slightly misleading, since I came back to Salt Lake City when “home,” in my mind, was Southern California. My parents had moved to Utah right after I graduated from high school. I stayed in LA and attended USC for my freshman year. I did spend the summer up in Utah before I left for Scotland in ’87, but to call it “home” would still be a little strong.

But whether I thought of it as home, it’s where I spent the next year, since I had enrolled in the University of Utah as an English major. Why? Because my mission had taught me that all actors were going to hell, so I should try to find a new, more spiritually acceptable profession, like dentistry.

Anyway, my triumphant return from missionary life was marred by a bizarre spectacle: The girl I was dating before my mission flew up from LA to meet me at the SLC airport - and dump me. (By the way, that’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me, but it’s a story for another day.)

So, here I was, a stranger in a strange land, having spent two years out in the mission field, where you can get in trouble if you give a girl an extended handshake. Now I was supposed to create a social life in a place where I had no history, no friends, and no confidence. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, and that, along with two years of enhanced abstinence, made me a disaster around the ladies. I couldn’t open my mouth around a pretty girl and string together a coherent sentence. Even the ugly ones were giving me trouble.

So my mother, in a well-intentioned but ultimately doomed effort, called a friend of hers to persuade her U of U son to invite me along on some sort of social outing. The son was a very nice guy, and he dutifully complied with my mother’s meddling. He called me up and told me that he and some of his friends were taking dates up to their family cabin in Coalville, and they’d even lined up some sacrificial lambette to be my blind date, and would I be interested in coming?

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

This group of friends had known each other since kindergarten. I was definitely the odd man out. They came and picked me up, introduced me to my date – who, as I remember, was actually quite pretty – and we drove for an hour, in which everyone talked amongst themselves in a relaxed and friendly manner. You know, the way normal people talk.

I just sat there.

I said nothing. I was terrified. I felt unbelievably awkward. I used the time to sweat a lot. I think I was literally shaking for most of the night. Once in awhile, my date or some other noble soul would ask me a token question and try to engage me in a conversation, but I always answered with a terse, one-or-two-word response. "Yeah." "Uh-huh." "Dunno."

I wanted to die.

So we got to the cabin and everyone kibitzed for a while, and I stood around by the punch bowl and drank about six gallons of unspiked Hi-C. I think I went to the bathroom about twelve times. Then they started a movie, which, of course, the girls picked:

Beaches.

It was a welcome relief, because no one was looking at me, feeling sorry for me, or expecting me to talk. Everyone else took the opportunity to snuggle up and smooch a little. I stared grimly at the screen, determined not even to glance at the face of the date who surely now wished I would drop dead and make the evening more interesting.

Part of the reason the movie didn’t affect my sexual orientation was that I wasn’t really watching it. Sure, I was staring at it, unblinking, like a zombie, but my mind was racing. What do I say when the movie ends? What’s she thinking? What’s everyone else thinking? When will I get home? Will I ever get home? Am I going to wet myself? Should I go to the bathroom again?

Yikes.

I can’t remember the names of any of the people involved in this self-inflicted fiasco. I just remember thinking that I’d probably never make any new friends, that my life would never make any sense, and that if I was ever going to have a girl kiss me again, I’d probably have to pay her to do it.

You know how people complain about their blind dates from hell? Ever wonder who these blind dates from hell actually are? In the winter of 1989, it was me. I’m sure that pretty lambette will tell stories to her grandchildren about the Freaky Blind Date Guy Who Never Said a Word.

Life has gotten much better since that night, but, as you can see, my Beaches aversion runs far deeper than the average straight dude.

On Not Being Gay

I’m a slob. That’s why I’m not gay.

Seinfeld taught us that all gay people are thin, single, and neat. I used to be two out of three, but my piles of wrinkled clothing and the fast food wrappers stored in my car kept me from going over the edge. Of course, now I’m married and fat, too, so I’m straight for life.

I still fit a bunch of the gay stereotypes, though. I hate sports. When I lived in the dorms at USC, I used to do my laundry during the football games because all the washers were free. (My opposition to organized athletics has mellowed with time, but that’s not saying much.) I also dig musical theatre, which, I’m told, holds some appeal to the gay demographic. I sang in a choir from the time I was 11 to the time I was 17. I played the French horn in middle school, for crying out loud. If that won’t turn you gay, nothing will.

As a kid, I threw the word “fag” around as a generic epithet, like “jerk” or “doofus.” I had no idea what the word actually meant. Even after I finally found out, I still thought that actual gay people couldn’t possibly exist. They were make believe, like elves, gremlins or Eskimos.

I think I believed that until I was about twelve or thirteen, when I met, for the first time, a man who openly identified himself as gay. (It was at a choral festival, which is very surprising, as I didn’t think gay people liked choral festivals.) He was a nice enough guy and did nothing inappropriate, but he seriously weirded me out. He fit every stereotype – he was effeminate, swishy, talked with a lisp, the whole nine yards. That’s when I decided that gay people weren’t fictional – they were just exceptionally rare circus freaks, like Jojo the Monkey Boy or the Bearded Lady with an Extra Nose. It didn’t occur to me that people I actually knew in everyday life could ever think or feel like the creepy gay dude I'd just met.

I’m not sure when reality finally dawned on me, but it was a long time coming. I now have gay relatives, gay in-laws, and gay friends. This is probably no big deal to most people, but it all gets kind of messy when the Mormon Church gets involved.

The Church has always insisted that homosexual behavior is a sin against God, but it has struggled with how to deal with the temptation. Once upon a time, some leaders counseled homosexuals to get married to fix everything. Or play sports. Or pray harder. The message seemed to be that if you were more righteous, the temptation would go away. One friend of mine did all three, and, when nothing changed, he left the Church as he annulled his temple wedding the day after it happened.

He hates the Church. He hates life in general. He’s not a particularly happy guy.

The actual, official position of the Church gets misrepresented to some degree. I think it’s a bit more flexible than many realize. Yes, there’s no compromise on whether the behavior is sinful, but there’s also the reassurance that the temptation is not. That’s little consolation to some who see no acceptable outlet for their feelings, but it should be noted that it’s the same thing the Church asks of unmarried heterosexuals.

When I made this point to a friend of mine, he said, “At least the straight singles get pity.” If the Church is softening on this issue at all, it’s in this way – gays are starting to get pity, too. I’m not sure if that’s a huge step forward, as pity isn’t really my thing. I do think, however, that those who struggle with homosexual feelings and remain members of the Church are singularly remarkable people who are carrying a cross far heavier than any load I’ve been called to bear.

They don’t deserve pity; they deserve respect.

I can’t personally judge homosexuals. When I see adulterers or thieves or liars, I know and appreciate the temptation that led them into folly. I have no similar context for understanding homosexuality. I’m tempted, to some degree, to do as Seinfeld did when George Constanza unloaded all his deepest, darkest, most depraved secrets to him. Seinfeld listened patiently, but afterward, he just said, “Yeah, well, good luck with all that!” and walked away.

That’s the temptation for a large number of Mormons, too. We don’t get it, so we ignore it. We become Ahmedinijad at Columbia University. There are no homosexuals in Iran.

That’s a huge mistake. God isn’t ignoring anyone, and neither should we.

Except Barbra Streisand. I loathe Barbra Streisand. I’m somewhat indifferent to Judy Garland, but I don’t know anything about her non-Oz work. Bette Midler is OK in small doses, but I’d rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass than sit through Beaches again.

Two Movie Musicals

I watched two movie musicals this weekend. One worked; one didn’t. Which was which? You might be surprised.

It’s very hard to make a credible movie musical. On a stage, everything’s somewhat artificial, so when people spontaneously burst into song, it’s easy to suspend disbelief. Movies mimic reality far more closely, so filmed people who sing instead of speak always look, at best, slightly ridiculous. At worst, they look like total buffoons.

If you doubt this, watch the movie version of The Phantom of the Opera, AKA Buffoons on Parade.

Musical theatre snobs look down their noses at the collected works of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I think they do so for all the wrong reasons. They think Lloyd Webber is a talentless hack; a wannabe Sondheim that one friend of mine dubbed “Andrew Lloyd Salieri.” Very clever and snarky, but this overlooks the fact Lloyd Webber is an exceptionally skilled pop composer with a gift for catchy melodic hooks.

That’s why I believe his most successful piece is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, because it doesn’t aspire to be anything but a plain ol’ good time. Lloyd Webber only falters when he tries to gain the respect of the snooty purists who claim to hate him but would kill for his box office grosses. So he churns out dreck like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, which are supposed to be Big and Important, yet both feel like high school term papers by teenagers with more ego than insight. Even in his worst shows, though, Lloyd Webber manages to produce some truly stellar melodies, like Superstar’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and Evita’s “Another Suitcase In Another Hall.”

That leads us to The Phantom of the Opera. On stage, it’s Webber’s best and worst show, all at the same time.

It’s the best because of the tunes, or, at least, the ones that work. The title track rocks, and “Music of the Night” and “Think of Me” are simple, effective melodies that linger in your brain long after the show is over. When the show tries to pretend to be some sort of grand opera, it becomes pretentious. Still, the haunting Gothic romance at the heart of the story ends up succeeding in spite of Lloyd Webber’s best efforts to drown it in a sea of bombast.

At least, that’s the stage version. In the movie, the story never gets a chance to come up for air. It’s all bombast all the time, and it’s deeply, intensely silly.

It doesn’t help that Lloyd Webber chose Joel Schumacher to direct this pile. Schumacher is the wunderkind who inflicted the movie Batman and Robin on the world, complete with the disturbing BatSuit with BatNipples. Schumacher’s Phantom is BatNipples put to put to music – big, stupid, cluttered, and noisy. Yet for all its frenzied motion, the show never goes anywhere. It’s painfully, agonizingly slow. Schumacher lingers on his extravagant, expensive art direction – which is stunning, indeed – and dazzles us with his clever camera angles and such, but he never bothers to engage you in the characters, most of whom are woefully miscast, including the Phantom.

Especially the Phantom.

Gosh, this Phantom sucks. First off, he can’t sing. Second, he’s better looking than Raoul, which gets the story exactly wrong. And when he takes off his mask, he looks like he’s had a really bad sunburn. That’s it. That’s the reason he’s a murderer and a lonely miserable outcast. He fell asleep in a tanning booth.

The irony is that the movie is entirely faithful to the stage production, which is one of the main reasons it fails. Schumacher has no idea why these people start singing out of nowhere, and he makes no attempt to compensate for the difference between stage and film. Instead, he shows us lots of pretty set dressing and hopes that will be enough.

Contrast that with High School Musical II, which my kids can’t stop watching, so I sat down with them to see what all the fuss was about.

It was a whole lot of fun.

It wasn’t great, ponderous theatre. It was light and fun, with very engaging actors and a whole lot of catchy tunes. Was it Sondheim? Heavens, no. It was an airy pop confection, and it didn’t pretend to be anything else. It also made allowances for why everyone is singing all the time. It worked as a movie, not just a musical.

I should admit that it helped that the whole thing was filmed at the Entrada Golf Course just outside of St. George, Utah, about five minutes from where our family used to live. Those red rock cliffs in the background were very familiar Southern Utah landmarks that look nothing like New Mexico, where the film was ostensibly set. When we went back to visit, some friends took my girls to go meet the High School Musical cast, and they came back with autographs. (They said that Ashley Tinsdale was very nice to them, but Vanessa Hudgens was kind of snotty.)

So, to sum up: enjoy High School Musical II. Skip Phantom. And beware of Sweeney Todd, the Sondheim masterpiece that’s getting the Tim Burton treatment this Christmas.

I’m thinking it will probably suck.

No Peace for the Wicked

Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize is just as significant as Halle Berry being the first black woman to win Best Actress at the Oscars.

Remember Berry’s groundbreaking victory? According to her, it wasn’t just Halle Berry who won. It was "every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.” What a great lesson! A truly awful actress¹ can win an Oscar in order to make nameless, faceless women² of color feel better about themselves. The Academy Awards are always silly and self congratulatory, yes, but shouldn’t the Best Actress award go to someone who could credibly be called the year’s best actress?

And shouldn’t a “Peace Prize” go to someone who furthers the cause of peace?

Al Gore has done nothing to further the cause of world peace. Actually, he’s done less than nothing, or, that is to say, he’s done positive harm. The alarmist nonsense he peddles is designed to cripple the industrial economies of any nation that buys what he’s selling, which will lead to more strife between nations, not less.

At least terrorist thug Yasser Arafat gave lip service to peace when he got his prize. Al Gore does not bring peace, or even pretend to do so. He comes bearing a green, carbon-neutral sword. He wants us to dismantle American industry to “limit CO₂ emissions” and keep those dirty, inconvenient little Third Worlders trapped in their pristine, unspoiled, undeveloped – read “impoverished” –innocence.

Arguments about the science of Global Warming end up devolving into a battle of credentials and not of facts, which discourages honest discussion and allows Gore and Co. to declare the debate over and label anyone who disagrees with them as something akin to a Holocaust denier.

No, I’m not a scientist. I don’t play one on TV. However, I’m going to make an irrefutable scientific statement with which no one can disagree.

The climate is changing.

Everyone who has ever lived on the planet could have truthfully made that statement, too. It has ever been true. It always will be true. We do not live in a static environment.

So Gore takes a true premise – the climate is changing – and extrapolates a massive social agenda with astoundingly far-reaching consequences, demanding colossal expansion of government power.

If you accept the premise, you have to accept the agenda. If you agree with the problem but disagree with the solution, you’re Goebbels.

But there are so many other solutions, and many would be more effective. You know what would really cut down on carbon emissions? Level New York City. Or gather up all the cars and bury them somewhere by Yucca Mountain. Shut down all the power plants. And while you’re at it, close the hospitals. And if that doesn’t work, there’s a quicker, more efficient way.

Genocide. Just kill lots of people. That’ll do it.

Actually, the economic consequences of shutting down carbon emissions is little more than genocide on the installment plan. Denying the positive effects of industrialization to millions means many more of them will die early, painful deaths. In contrast, limiting carbon emissions may or may not have any effect at all on global temperatures. Even if Gore's right - and that's a HUGE if - the costs outweigh the benefits, which are all theoretical anyway. The carnage and death that these policies have wrought are all too real.

If Al Gore continues to get his way, the nations of Africa will remain unindustrialized and riddled with disease, squabbling and murdering to gain control over ever-dwindling resources. Why? Because if they were to burn the fossil fuels necessary to bring their countries out of the Stone Age, they’d heat up the globe and force Ghandi Gore to turn up the air conditioning on his Gulfstream private jets.

This is what the Nobel Prize committee calls “peace.”

Gore and the whole Global Warming movement make me sick to my stomach.

_______________________________


¹In the interests of intellectual honesty, I must admit that I have not seen Monster’s Ball, the film for which Ms. Berry won the award, nor do I have any desire to see it. Why? Because I have seen Bulworth, Die Another Day, and the three X-Men films. Ms. Berry is wretched in all of them. There’s a pattern there. If she, in fact, defied all laws of nature and summoned forth one credible performance, she would have drained her tiny reservoir of talent completely. She clearly didn’t have any leftover for Catwoman.

²Isn’t it odd of Berry to refer to “nameless, faceless” people, regardless of their color? Or is this the new, politically correct way to refer to what elites used to call the “little people?”

Worm Man II: Fox Man Returns

Once there was a super hero named Worm Man. He had a super speed mode car plane boat. Fox Man came back to attack the city. Worm Man did not know how Fox Man came back. Fox Man brought his Mega Sword. He knocked down a building. But what could Worm Man do? He could be Fox Man’s friend. Yes, he could.

So he walked to Fox Man and he said “Do you want to be my friend?”

“Yes, I want to be your friend.” But then Fox Man thought - should he be Worm Man’s friend? Then he decided yes. So they built a house and Fox Man built a house, too.

The next day, Fox Man went to play at Worm Man’s house. There was a bad guy that made Fox Man when he was bad, but he did not want to be bad again so he went to attack the bad guy. The bad guy went to jail. So Fox Man went down the street and knocked on the door and they jumped on the tramp. They played tag.

“Thanks for being my friend. That made a difference in my life.”

The end.

Remembering Gref Dafflebaum

Sadly, Google can only find two lingering online evidences of the delightful Finnish sitcom Gref Dafflebaum, considered by many to be the finest Scandinavian situation comedy since Bunion Thunder. Yet it was only three years ago when Gref references were plentiful – he had his own tribute page, a raging discussion on the Cinescape board, and even memorabilia sales on eBay.

Confused?

You’re probably not as confused as the admins on the old Cinescape Classic Television bulletin board, which Languatron invaded a few years ago. After being banned from every other respectable board, Langy was trying to find a new audience for his wild-eyed theories that Ron Moore drinks the blood of flatulent virgins and Universal Studios controls the weather. So Lang landed at Cinescape.com, and I, along with several of my fellow Lang battle veterans, followed him there to make his life miserable.

The Cinescape folks got pretty grumpy, because amid this sudden explosion of Langy flame wars, no one was actually discussing classic television shows. We were, in the words of the admins, “wasting valuable bandwidth.” This had clearly never been a problem before, as the board was getting about three posts a month before we arrived. Still, to avoid being banned, it was important that we temper our anti-Lang rhetoric with some actual discussion of long-cancelled TV shows.

So, on a whim, I wrote a post that said “Anyone else remember the show Gref Dafflebaum, about the guy with the limp and the unibrow? What a classic.”

It all snowballed from there.

Suddenly, everyone was remembering specific details about this obscure little treasure. There was, of course, the limp, the unibrow, and assorted other physical oddities. There was the best friend character who was always stuffing hams down his pants. There was the infamous "Hats" episode, which everyone hated because it had too many hats.

The admins got pretty angry. They insisted that we were making it all up, and our silly banter was eating up valuable server space that should have been devoted to conversations about The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Sanford and Son. They threatened to kick us off the board unless we stopped fooling around.

Suddenly, a tribute page to the Gref Dafflebaum series appeared online. It featured an episode guide, a few reviews, and this picture (left), identified as a screen capture from one of the actual Gref shows. The caption to the picture read “Dafflebaum! You have report for me? Yes or no?”

How could anyone doubt Dafflebaum anymore? The verdict was in - Gref was for real. We were vindicated at last. After all, you couldn't make up something like that.

Astonishingly, the admins still weren’t convinced. They needed proof. Physical, tangible evidence that Gref Dafflebaum wasn't just a fignment of our deranged imaginations.

And the proof came.

An actual Gref Dafflebaum lunchbox came up for sale on eBay.

The bidding was fast and furious. We were clearly not the only ones with a fondness for our limping, unibrowed Finnish friend. Sure, a skeptic could say that the lunchbox was a crudely Photoshopped forgery, but skeptics also think Elvis is dead. Who are you going to believe – a skeptic or a guy who puts ham sandwiches in a lunchbox so he can stuff lunchmeat down his pants? Huh? I rest my case.

In the end, it was all for naught. Cinescape didn’t buy it. We were all summarily banned, and the Cinescape board eventually disappeared. At least Lang was banned, too, though, so we actually accomplished something.

Now that the dust has settled, the memory still brings a tear to my eye. How could anyone doubt the majesty of Dafflebaum? After all, I know Gref is for real. Real, I tell you! I know this!

And how do I know this?

I won the bidding on the lunchbox.

It arrived shortly after the bidding ended, and it's in mint condition. I still have it. I sleep with it. I bathe with it. I keep it close to my heart, along with cherished memories of Dafflebaum’s finest moments, like the time when his shoes fell into a vat of pasta.

It’s not as good as Bunion Thunder, but it’ll do.

All Hail Foodleking!

Foodleking has arrived.

For those of you who don’t know him, which would likely be all of you, I want to take a moment to introduce you to someone who is one of my very best friends in the world.

I’ve known Foodleking since I was six years old, when I first moved to Southern California. He became especially prominent in my life because we attended the same church and the same school. Growing up, I had school friends and church friends and artsy fartsy friends, but Foodleking crossed over into all of them. (Not so much the artsy fartsy, actually. He’s not really artsy, although he would probably admit to being somewhat fartsy – more so as he ages.)

As a result, almost all of the experiences that I’ve recounted in this blog have included him, too. Foodleking was a firsthand witness to the Majesty of Springsteen, many of my Brushes with Greatness, and the Horrors of the Order of the Arrow. (He, unlike me, is a real live Eagle Scout. My mother told me that if I didn’t follow in Foodleking’s footsteps and become an Eagle, I would regret it for the rest of my life. Based on that criteria, the rest of my life has yet to begin.)

There are innumerable Foodleking stories I could recount, and I probably will as time wears on. My entire childhood is filled with them. We carpooled and trick or treated and played on the same little league teams together. (He was a good athlete, though, and I wasn’t.) We chased the same girls. (He caught them, though, and I didn’t.) We did the same drugs. (He didn’t do any drugs, though. Fortunately, neither did I.) I’m sitting here trying to remember specific incidents, but it’s impossible to narrow it down. It’s like trying to single out experiences you have with a brother, which, essentially, is what Foodleking was and is.

He was in the car with me when I got pulled over for driving 101 miles per hour. He broke into the Missionary Training Center in Provo with me to give another one of our friends a contraband TV Guide. As a groomsman at my wedding, he made a thinly-veiled crude toast about part of my anatomy that went over everyone’s head but mine. (I’ll leave that one to your imagination.)

About a year ago, Foodleking, Mrs. Foodleking, and his growing family – four kids at last count, if I’m not mistaken – made the trek up to Utah to pay us a visit. He’s quite the grown up now with a real job and everything, but no matter how long we go between visits, it feels like no time at all. We just pick up where we left off.

Much seems to have happened in that intervening year, however. According to his Blogger profile, he now lives in Afghanistan, working as an excavator in the fashion industry. This seems like quite a departure from his previous career, but I'm sure he's the best darn fashion excavator the Afghani fashion industry has ever had.

So, Foodleking, welcome again. Feel free to correct my stories when I screw them up.

"When Do You Suck?"

Since I’ve told you two stories of people who loathe me – one here and one here – I thought I’d complete the trilogy with what is, perhaps, the most bizarre I-Hate-Stallion story ever. It’s also, fortunately, the one with the happiest ending, so I’ll put it down here for posterity and then start talking about non-hate crap for a little while.

In the year 2000, I was the Artistic Director at the Tuacahn Center for the Arts. Having just come off of Tuacahn’s most successful season ever, due in large part to the stunning success of their recent production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, I was the one primarily responsible for ensuring that the next season would equal or exceed the year before. (It didn’t, but that’s another story.) The shows on tap for the summer were Fiddler on the Roof and one of my all-time favorites, The Music Man.

If you’ve read this blog from the outset, you know I have some colorful history with that particular show. Yet the summer of 2000 ensured that Andrew Fogelson’s Magic Kiss would pale in comparison to my 21st century Music Man experience. (Yeah, I know. The year 2000 was technically the end of the 20th century. Do you want me to finish the story or not?)

There are two new characters who figure prominently in this story – a husband and wife I’ll dub Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie worked for Tuacahn as a company manager, and that year he was given the assignment of casting director as well, which was the first mistake. The directors of the show ended up having the last word on the casting, anyway, so no matter how often Casting Director Ozzie crossed swords with these guys – and it was often, indeed - the directors always got their way in the end.

Harriet also worked for Tuacahn, too, albeit on a seasonal basis. She had just played the narrator in Joseph in 1999, and she was absolutely dynamite. She was very pretty, and she had a smoky, powerful voice that sounds great in both pop and legit pieces. She was also an accomplished dancer and choreographer, and after the success of ’99, the Tuacahn Board decreed that Harriet would be cast as Marian the Librarian, the lead of The Music Man, prior to any auditions or the hiring of any other staff.

That was mistake #2, and boy, was it a doozy.

I got to know Ozzie fairly well, since I worked with him on a daily basis. I quite liked him. Even through all the weirdness that I’m about to describe, we got along just fine. However, I was barely acquainted with his wife. To this day, I cannot recall a single interaction with her that lasted more than a sentence or two. (That’s important for later, so keep it in mind.)

The biggest casting challenge we faced was the role of Harold Hill, the titular "music man" from the play in question. Ozzie was insistent that an old friend and Tuacahn alumnus from the previous year be cast in the role. At the time, that idea didn’t bother me – the guy in question was, in fact, really good, and I cast him as Sitting Bull two years later when I directed Tuacahn’s production of Annie Get Your Gun. The director, however, didn’t want to go there. In his mind, Ozzie’s friend was wrong physically for the role, since he was short, stocky, and bald. This difference of opinion proved to be a huge sticking point throughout auditions, since we went through at least half a dozen different Harold Hill candidates, all of whom fell through for one reason or another. (One even got a contract and almost signed on the dotted line, but then he got a better gig and all was lost.)

Now during all this time, I must admit I had a secret, burning desire to get back up on stage again. I would have loved to play Harold Hill one more time, and doing so onstage at Tuacahn would have been a dream come true. I did not, however, raise this idea throughout auditions. I was a producer and an administrator now, and nobody even considered me as an acting possibility. But when auditions were over and Harold Hills kept dropping like flies, I foolishly decided to throw my name into the mix.

Ozzie was clearly nonplussed by the idea, but he asked me to audition for him, nevertheless. It was a terribly awkward experience to leave the office, walk a few yards to a nearby piano, and sing for this guy I saw every day and worked down the hall from. It didn’t go well, and he essentially told me, in polite but no uncertain terms, that I was out of my mind.

Yet time wore on, and we still didn’t have a Harold Hill. So, still secretly obsessed, I called the director. He asked me to audition, too.

That one went better. Not great, but better. “There’s a Harold Hill in there,” the director said, “but it’s clearly been a long time since you were on stage, and you’re a little rusty.” That was hard to hear, but it was an honest assessment. The last time I’d been in a show had been six years earlier, and it would be quite a risk to bet the success of an entire Tuacahn summer season on my performance.

But then fate intervened.

The director’s first choice for the role of Harold Hill was a prominent Salt Lake actor of some renown, who, alas, would not be available for the final two weeks of the summer. After my audition, the director decided that he could cast the Salt Lake guy as Harold Hill, and that I could step in to the role at the end of the season to finish out the run.

Ozzie didn’t like it, obviously, but the one who went ballistic, and who had never figured into the equation at all before this, was Harriet.

Harriet proceeded to unload to everyone who would listen about just how awful a performer I was, ignoring the fact that she had never seen me perform. She insisted that I’d schemed to make this happen from day one, which, given the history of the casting process, was demonstrably untrue. Still, she proclaimed that I was “unworthy” to be on the same stage with her. She also suggested, somewhat perversely, that one of the main reasons I wanted to play the role was so I could kiss her onstage.

I’m jumping ahead here, but I want to state, for the record, that kissing Harriet was unarguably the least erotic experience of my life. I’ve described it to some as the Opposite of an Affair. In a real affair, two people try to hide their mutual attraction as they secretly indulge their forbidden passions away from the prying eyes of the world. With Harriet and me, two people who were repelled by each other were forced to press lips together in full view of nearly 2,000 people per night. I can remember counting the seconds until I could end the faux embrace, and I always felt relieved when the fireworks in the background gave me the cue to release her so I could breathe again.

The thing that was so baffling about this experience was the depth of her animosity toward me. Some observers tried to describe this as Stallion v. Harriet, but the truth was I didn’t know Harriet. I had barely spoken to her. People say with regard to fights that it always takes two to tango, but I don’t believe that anymore. Harriet was very good – and very angry – dancing solo.

The problem got worse as the summer wore on and my debut drew closer. I was already suspect among the cast, since they were Labor and I was Upper Management. It didn’t help that Harriet spent the weeks and months leading up to those dreaded final performances tearing me down to all her fellow castmates. I don’t think I was imagining the icy resentment I felt every time I came in contact with one of the actors. They were convinced, in the absence of any evidence contrary to Harriet’s rants, that, because of me, their show was doomed.

My own apprehension began to grow over the summer, and if I could have found someone to take my place, I would have. Because despite how ill-used I felt, deep in my gut, part of me began to believe that Harriet was probably right.

In may seem trivial now, but at the time, I made the subject a matter of fervent prayer, and I asked my dad for a father’s blessing, in which he assured me that all would be well and I would feel calm and relaxed when the time came for me to perform my role.

Anyway, to cut to the chase: it was a smashing success. I wasn’t just adequate. I nailed it. To everyone’s surprise - especially mine - I hit it out of the park.

I’ve never had more fun in my life than I did the first night I went on stage. As I had arranged with the bandleader a few days earlier, I took the tempo of "Trouble," the show’s signature piece, up several notches. Harriet stood in the wings in tears, saying over and over “He’s ruining the show! He’s ruining the show!” But the overwhelmingly positive audience reaction said otherwise. The trepidation of the cast melted away instantly, and I felt as calm and peaceful as I’d ever felt in my life. I did well that first night, and I did better with each performance. It was a thrill. It was also the last time I’ve ever performed on stage.

Perhaps the greatest accolade I received was from one of the young kids in the cast, who came up to me near the end of the run and asked, simply, “When do you suck?”

I told her I didn’t understand the question.

“When do you suck?” she said again. “Everyone said you were going to suck, but you didn’t. You’re really good. So when do you suck?”

High praise, indeed.

Still, throughout the run, Harriet refused to speak to me, even to say hello. We would come offstage after making moony eyes at each other, and then the brick wall would go up and she’d stalk off into the wings without looking at me. It was strange, but it was just something I had to accept, like the weather. Everyone else was exceptionally kind and generous, and I had a wonderful time.

Finally, on closing night, after all was said and done, I found myself alone with Ozzie, who, I note again, had been surprisingly pleasant throughout all of this. So I took the occasion to ask a question.

“Ozzie,” I said, “I didn’t want to say anything while we were going through this, but now that the show’s over, and all of this is behind us, I have to ask: what do I have to do to make peace with your wife?”

Ozzie’s face darkened. “I don’t know,” he said. “You two have a lot of $%^& to work out.”

I almost laughed. Fact is, I didn’t have anything to work out with Harriet. You work things out with people with whom you have relationships. I work things out with my wife, children, family and friends. I don’t work things out with brick walls I don’t know.

I think it was two years ago that I received a lengthy Christmas card from Harriet, in which she apologized for how she had acted and said some other nice things I don’t remember. Glad to see she worked it out. I hope things are going well for her.

But I’m left wondering: what is it about me that inspires this kind of stuff? Is it my dashing good looks? My love of fondue? My loose bowels? What?

Manny, Moe and Jack: A Lesson in Anger Management

The past two days have been General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the course of five two-hour sessions, the leaders of the church give instruction to the entire membership, and it always leaves me with a determination to be a better guy. (It’s also a delightful weekend, because it’s broadcast on TV in Utah, so the whole family gets to watch church on television in their pajamas.)

Anyway, the talk that really captivated me was Church President Gordon B. Hinckley’s sermon on anger. I’ve commented on anger and hatred in this blog before, and an anonymous writer has criticized me for my embrace of Ann Coulter, due to her angry ways. President Hinckley’s talk brought me closer in agreement to his/her way of thinking, and I thought I should take a moment to mention that.

The talk also called to mind one of the seminal episodes of my life, which I want to recount here. I’ve changed the names of three of the main characters herein to Manny, Moe, and Jack, not because these three guys are real-life Pep Boys or in any way peppier than the average dude, but because it would be inappropriate to use their real names. This story is much like the one with the girl who harbored a grudge against me for years, except the impact of what I’m about to share with you has been far more significant.

Once upon a time, Manny was a good friend and something of a mentor. We went into business together, and, for reasons that were important then but now matter little almost fourteen years later, I fired him.

I’ve never been divorced. If I were, I imagine the experience would be similar to what happened back then. The split was acrimonious; angry words were exchanged, and the fallout intensified as everyone we knew took sides. I mentally prepared a list of talking points as to why I was in the right and Manny needed to go, and, in turn, Manny and those on his side had their own list, and the battle raged for quite some time thereafter.

This story, however, is not really about Manny. It took awhile, but Manny and I have finally made peace with each other. I ran into him several years after the fact and the encounter was entirely pleasant. After that, he wrote me a very kind note that indicated that, while certainly he wasn’t happy with the way things went down, he harbors no ill feelings toward me. Now, when I think about Manny, I do so only with fondness.

This story is primarily about Moe.

Moe and I were friends, too, but somewhat tangentially. Like me, he went to church at the USC ward, but I showed up there just as he was finishing his degree. Consequently, many of my good friends – including Manny - knew Moe well, but I had relatively little firsthand interaction with him. He was something of a larger-than-life figure and a legend in the USC Ward, and I often regretted that I had missed the opportunity to know him better.

I had one exchange with him, however, that foreshadowed what was to come. Moe had served as a counselor to the USC Ward Bishop, a man who would later have a profound and positive impact on my own spiritual life. Moe, however, used the occasion of a church party to accuse this Bishop of something terrible. He also labeled him “an evil man.” I was somewhat taken aback by this, but Moe’s reputation was such that I accepted his words at face value and was wary of that Bishop for longer than I should have been. In retrospect, I now see that Moe was a fiercely loyal friend, which is why so many people loved him. Conversely, he could be a bitter, bitter enemy.

About eighteen months after I fired Manny, a letter arrived in the mail from Moe. It was fifteen pages, single-spaced, and to say it took me to task for what I had done would be a gross understatement.

It was a full-frontal assault, accusing me of a myriad of real and imagined crimes, comparing me to everyone from Iago to Judas to Satan himself.

Yet this was no Languatronic goofball rant. Moe is a very bright guy, and his letter was exceptionally well-written. He meticulously and brutally assembled the evidence to prove I was a monster, a vindictive destroyer of other people lives. He cited the opinions of scores of nameless people, “more than I knew,” who were disgusted with my tyrannical behavior but, unlike Moe, were too cowardly to call me to account. He ascribed the worst possible motives to every single one of my decisions. And all of it was couched in the language of the Gospel, calling down fire from heaven to punish me for my sins.

It was filled with a cold fury the likes of which I have never seen before or since.

I responded to the letter as dispassionately as possible, trying to dispel some of the more ludicrous accusations and feebly attempting to get Moe to think better of me. It was troubling to me to think that I had an enemy, someone who took pleasure in my failures and actively sought my destruction. Even worse, I was sure Moe had persuaded a large number of people I thought were my friends that I was, indeed, evil, and that, while some of what he said was clearly preposterous, much of it was rooted in the truth.

It took some sleepless nights and plenty of soul searching, but I determined that the only way to rebut his accusations would be to live my life as honorably as I could. No one who wanted to believe the worst of me would be persuaded otherwise by a letter or a debate or a confrontation. In retrospect, the letter has proved to be a blessing, as it toughened my skin and gave me the strength to live well, regardless of what others thought of me. It was, however, a very painful way to learn a valuable lesson.

It was also not the end of the story.

A little over a year ago, I met Jack and his family. Jack is a business partner with my brother-in-law, and his family and my sister’s family are very close. We were at Aspen Grove Family Camp, and I had the opportunity to get to know Jack, and I found him to be a bright, engaging, fun-loving guy.

So I was pretty startled when, one afternoon, Jack took me aside and said, “we need to have a discussion about Moe.”

Back in California, Jack and Moe had been in the same church congregation in the intervening years, and they had become good friends. Because of Jack’s association with my family, however, Moe took occasion to tell Jack about the letter, even quoting from it at length. (Thankfully, I destroyed the letter shortly after receiving it, so I would have been unable to do the same.) Not too long ago, he told Jack how proud he was to have sent it, and, according to Jack, Moe is still convinced that I'm a demon, and his rage toward me has not diminished with time. If anything, over the course of more than a decade, it has intensified.

I asked what I could do. My options were limited. Unlike my relationship with Manny, there was little or no prior friendship to repair. There was nothing to apologize for, because the situation at issue had nothing to do with him. Jack told me there was nothing I could do. Moe wore his anger as a badge of honor. All I could do was live my life and hope for the best.

If I were to talk to Moe, all I could say is that I forgive him for hating me. And that would probably make him even angrier.

I wish I could resolve this. Moe has since moved to Utah and now lives about a half hour from where I live.

Aaaargh! Languatron Invades Real Life!

Saying the name “Languatron” aloud in polite company is a slightly disturbing experience.

I’ve certainly done it on a few occasions, usually with members of my family. (My wife likes to use the handle “Languatron” when we play laser tag, in honor of Langy’s own stated enthusiasm for that particular activity.) But last night, my strange Internet history collided with real life in an unexpected way, and it was all somewhat surreal.

We were at a wedding reception for our across-the-street neighbor, and several members of our local LDS congregation came to wish her well. I’m a little peeved, because my wife and I had decided she was supposed to marry my brother-in-law, and now that ‘s not going to happen, dag nab it. But I digress.

It was there that one of our other neighbors came up to me and said “I enjoy your blog.”

My blood froze.

Keep in mind that I don’t advertise my blog with actual flesh-and-blood types. For quite some time, in the real world, I’ve been able to pass myself off as a respectable, almost-normal citizen with no strange Yul Brynner fixation and/or propensity to inappropriately use the word “moist.”

So how had he found it?

He began here:



Javelin Man was a movie and song that I wrote for an LDS stake film festival, and a while ago, I put the finished product up on YouTube. It’s been quite successful – over 7,500 views at last count.

Well, this neighbor went to watch it and clicked on my handle to see if there were any other films in my collection.

He found this:



He told me it was strange and confusing, and he did a bit of research to find out who this Languatron guy was, which led him here. He concluded, as do all reasonable and sane people, that the guy was a major lunatic. We spent a few minutes discussing the history of Andrew Fullen’s grand battle against Universal executives.

That's when I learned that it’s one thing to write about this stuff. It’s quite another thing to discuss it out loud.

So Jared, hello! Keep reading! I promise there’s a lot more stuff on here than just Languatronic drivel. I’m not sure if any of it’s worth anyone’s time, but you can talk about most of it out loud without sounding like a loon.

Maybe.

The Dangers of Playing God

My wife gave me a copy of WarCraft II for Christmas of 1996, about two weeks before my first daughter was born.

She’s never given me another video game since.

I can’t begin to calculate the hours I wasted sneaking off to play that game. Just one more level. Just let me finish this. I’ll be there in a second. I’m almost done, I swear. It put a strain on my marriage, on my health, and on my professional career. And for what? Was killing orcs really that much fun?

Yes, it was. That’s why I need to stay far, far away from anything where I get to command digital armies.

I’ve always been a bit of a computer geek, even back in the days when I spent my paper route money to buy an Atari 400, which featured a really annoying plastic keyboard and all data had to be saved on audiotapes. It took about a half an hour to save even the most simple computer programs. Dreadful.

But I played all the games. I wasted those half hours. I remember loading up “States and Capitols,” a game on tape where you guessed what the capitol cities were of every state in the country. You can probably google a similar program somewhere today that would take about two seconds to load. Those aren’t the games that interest me now, anyway. They don’t waste nearly enough time.

I’m into God Games.

God Games are the ones where you essentially rule the universe and play out the consequences of your decisions. WarCraft is probably the best one out there, so I’ve scrupulously avoided getting anywhere near the whole World of Warcraft thing. I love my wife and I want to stay married.

The ones that have wasted most of my time since the initial WarCraft have been the SimCity and Civilization games. Especially Civilization, versions II, III, and IV. I keep deluding myself into thinking that every time I boot one of these suckers up, I’ll only play for an hour or so. At the end of a day wasted in front of one of these things, I’m left with a feeling of ennui and crippling guilt. Don’t try this at home.

On the surface, this looks like a fairly innocuous temptation. After all, it could be worse. I don’t do porn; I’m a complete teetotaler; I haven’t gambled in almost two decades. And these games are educational, right? You learn about civilizations and city management and interesting stuff, so how could it be bad?

Trust me. It is.

I’ve tossed all my Civ CDs and gone cold turkey. As long as I stay away from the hard stuff, I’m OK.

Rumors are that Civilization V will be released next year.

Hooray for Ann Coulter

I dig Ann Coulter.

There. I said it.

Respectable conservatives are supposed to shun her, because she “goes too far.” She says incendiary things that are supposedly an embarrassment to all good-hearted people. Liar Al Franken says she’s a lying liar. Hillary Clinton has called her heartless, and Elizabeth Edwards, if she were just a touch more violent, would probably have a contract out on her today.

I still dig her.

There’s no question that she’s far more provocative than almost all of her fellow conservative pundits. She’s certainly unafraid of what people might say about her, and she’s not interested in holding back out of respect for the rules of decorum. Unlike so many of her tepid allies, she’s willing to be loathed in the interest of winning her arguments. Consequently, she actually succeeds in advancing the conservative agenda – at the expense of her own personal reputation.

Case in point: when her book Godless was released, everyone zeroed in on her comments about the Jersey Girls, four 9/11 widows who have used their newfound prominence to campaign for John Kerry and excoriate the Bush administration. The sentence that brought the most criticism was her statement that “I've never seen people enjoy their husbands' deaths so much.”

Outrage! Shock! What an awful, awful thing to say! Republicans and Democrats alike fell all over themselves to condemn this mean, mean lady and her flying monkeys. In the meantime, more than a few people took a look at why she would write such a thing, and they discovered that she had a pretty good point, which is that Democrats rely on victims to present arguments in order to inoculate themselves from criticism.

So anyone who calls Cindy Sheehan a lunatic – which she is – runs the risk of looking like a bully, because she lost her son in Iraq. Similarly, Senator Max Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam, so who are you to say that he’s not supportive enough of anti-terrorism measures? Democrats counter arguments with biographies, and the opposition is cowed into silence.

Except for Ann Coulter, who blasts through with a comment so incendiary that it’s impossible to ignore.

As a result of this, Ann Coulter came off looking like a shrew, and many people willfully misinterpreted her comments to insinuate that she was deriding all 9/11 widows, which was clearly not the case. But she made her point. And now it’s much harder for Democrats to get away with this kind of nonsense. Just last week, the Democrats used an uninsured 12-year-old child to respond to the President’s weekly radio address and complain about the decision to veto the SCHIP program. Talk show host Glenn Beck mocked the Dems mercilessly for this, and nobody called for hanging him up by his thumbs. I’m not sure if that would have been true had Ann Coulter not paved the way for him with her over-the-top rhetoric.

This is not to say that all conservative firebrands are created equal. I can’t listen to talk show host Michael Savage for more than ten seconds. He’s just belligerent – he has none of Ann Coulter’s prickly intelligence or wit. His idea of reasoned discourse is to tell gay people to get AIDS and die. He’s utterly humorless, whereas Ann Coulter makes me laugh out loud on almost every page. And she always has a point to back up her insults.

I bring all this up because yesterday a local talk show host was up in arms over a statement in her new book where she says that it might be a good thing for women to lose the right to vote, because it would mean no Democrat would ever be elected.

That was the first I’d heard of her new book, so I rushed out and got my own copy of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. (I got a really dirty look from the Borders clerk who rang me up. That was kind of fun.)

I was disappointed to discover that the book is the literary equivalent of a TV clip show – a collection of quotes from her previous books and columns with very little new material. I also found the quote that had the local host’s panties in a twist and discovered it was a statement she’d made over four years ago. It’s also based on a factually true premise – if women hadn’t been able to vote, every Republican in the last 50 years would have won – even Bob Dole! To be “offended” by something like this is pretty stupid.

Have I ever been personally offended by anything Ann Coulter has written? Almost. In the new book, she cracks that Mitt Romney is a member of a “quasi-Christian church, the Masons.” That bugged me for about three seconds. Then I realized that most evangelicals wouldn’t even be willing to call Mormons “quasi-Christian,” and that calling Mormons “Masons” perfectly illustrates the confusion that the average voter has about my faith. So, in other words, Ann’s insult aimed at me actually has a point to it, too. (Taking offense is a colossal waste of time and energy, anyway.)

Flipping through the book, I stumbled on several quotes that might qualify as “beyond the pale,” but they made me laugh. So I share just a few of them with you.

The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media will only refer to partial birth abortion as “what its opponents refer to as partial birth abortion.” What do its supporters call it? Casual Fridays? Bean-with-bacon potato chip dip? Uh… Steve?
_________

Italian Interviewer: Is it possible to export democracy?
Ann Coulter: Yes. Ever heard of “Italy”?
_________

If John Kerry had a dollar for every time he bragged about serving in Vietnam – Oh wait, he does.
_________

Perhaps the Democrats could find an orphaned child whose parents were brutally hacksawed to death to put forward their tax plan.
_________

We must attack France. What are they going to do? Fight us?
_________

Interviewer: How would your career be different if you looked like Molly Ivins?
Ann Coulter: I’d be a lot uglier.

Don’t tell me you didn’t laugh at that last one.

Star Trek Movies

Despite my crusade against the horrors of transporter technology, I'm a Trek fan from way back. In college, after final exams, I would set up my little TV/VCR combo and watch Star Trek movies into the night. Not sure why this ritual caught on, but I highly recommend it. It’s a great way to soothe your inner geek.

Not all Star Trek movies are created equal. The conventional wisdom that the even numbered films are better than the odd numbered films pretty much holds true, except Star Trek III is pretty good and Star Trek 10- i.e. Nemesis – is bloody awful.

Trek movies, from best to worst:

Wrath of Khan isn't just the best Trek movie. It's one of the best movies ever made. It's airtight - not a wasted moment. The characters are note perfect, and Spock’s death is extraordinarily moving. My six year old son watched this with me and cried himself to sleep. We had to show him Star Trek III the next day to console him.

I've also memorized the dialogue from this movie, and it comes in handy in everyday situations. Walk into a crowded room and yell "This is Ceti Alpha V!" or "KHAAAAAAN!" and you'll be sure to win friends and influence people. No complaints, other than it would have been nice if Khan and Kirk had been in the same room at some point, but there it is.



Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is an overlooked gem. I was actually given the script for this before it came out, and it included a fun opening sequence where Kirk gathers up his retired crew for one last hurrah. I went to a screening at the Paramount lot before it opened, and the crowd was pretty dang enthusiastic. That experience may be why this one holds such a fond place in my heart.

Even so, it holds up very well with repeat viewings. The plot is solid, but what I find truly interesting is what they do with Spock. His confrontations with Valeris take this character to places he's never been before. A great last hurrah for the original series cast.



After the Generations debacle – see below - I expected Star Trek: First Contact to suck. But the Borg were too good a villain, and the whole Zefram Cochrane/First Contact idea worked too well. This is not, however, a character-driven film, which is a good thing, since the TNG characters aren't iconic enough to carry a film. That's why none of the other TNG movies worked. Other than Data and Picard, everyone else is interchangeable. (Maybe Worf, too, although he became something of a caricature as the series progressed.)

A strong plot and a great bad guy make this one work. (Love the creepy/sexy Borg queen!) It's probably the last piece of good Star Trek that has appeared in any medium.


Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, i.e. "the one with the whales" is generally considered by the unwashed masses to be the best Trek film ever. Certainly its the most accessible to non-fans, but that's what makes it off-putting to many die hards. It's a bit too jokey, and the "Save the Whales" moralizing is pretty tedious.

Still, everyone's having so much fun that it's hard not to get caught up in it. Spock's mind mild with the whale in the aquarium is hysterical, as is Chekov's quest to find "nuclear wessels." And Mormons everywhere guffawed when Kirk explained Spock's eccentricities on his hippie days when he "took too much LDS."

Shatner was a pretty smarmy date in the pizzeria, though.


In some ways, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is one of my favorite Treks, because it's the only one that's almost entirely character driven. It humanizes the characters in a way that has never been done before or since. Sulu was a cardboard cut out throughout the series and in the first two movies. Then he gets to beat up a guard and say "Don't call me tiny." Suddenly, he's a real person.

Everyone gets a moment. In one film, you discover these characters care about each other as people, which changes the dynamic of the whole film series going forward. This is actually a critical film in the series, and it gets dissed more than it deserves.

So why isn't it higher on my list? Because the plot is a by-the-numbers expositional slog with a cookie-cutter villain. You're always ten steps ahead of the characters, and there's a perfunctory feel to the whole thing. It works as a set-up for IV, but it doesn't stand well on its own.


Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a noble failure. It tries to be an embodiment of a Grand Idea in an attempt to sell a fairly interesting sci-fi concept, but this is the wrong vehicle to make it work.

I remember loving this movie when it first came out, because it was my chance to see Kirk, Spock and Co. back in action. It wasn't until I saw it a couple of years later on TV that I realized how ploddingly dull the whole thing was. The V'Ger thing is somewhat interesting, but the delivery comes at the expense of the characters. We finally get to see Kirk and Co. back in action, and all we get to watch is them staring out the window.

The recent Director's Cut made the stuff in the windows look better, but the film still doesn't work.


Star Trek: Generations was a collossal disappointment. Contrasting the lifeless TNG ciphers with the boldness of Captain Kirk made his pathetic fall off of a bridge even more disappointing. The opening scene is kind of fun, and Picard's actual meeting with Kirk was a thrill to watch. In total, that's about seven minutes of worthwhile screentime.

Everything else blows, especially the goofy "emotion chip."







Maybe I should rank Star Trek: Insurrection above Generations, since it isn't really terrible; it's just pointless. As I recall, it's a fair to middling TNG episode put on the big screen. To be honest, I don't remember much about it.

It clearly hasn't made its way into my repeat viewing roster.










Star Trek: Nemesis just sucked. Dull, lifeless, out of character Wrath of Khan wannabe. Data's pathetic death is, in some ways, even more embarrassing than Kirk's.

Actually, no, Kirk's was much worse. You knew what you were losing when they tossed him off the side of a bridge. When Data dies, you don't care, and, judging from the fact that Spiner's B4 now has all Data's memories, it changed nothing.








Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is unwatchable. Literally. I can't sit through it. It's not even good camp. The plot is preachy and anti-religious and incomprehensible, all at the same time. The jokes are painful. The art direction is muddy and cluttered. The story's even worse.

William Shatner demonstrates that he has absolutely no understanding of the franchise that made him a star. He shows contempt for his characters, mocking them without affection and undercutting the reasons for their loyalty.

Everything's wrong here. Gravity boots? Farting around the campfire? Uhura's shudder-inducing fan dance? Spock's New Age brother? I can't think of a single thing I like about this film.

Look away. It's hideous.

____________________

There’s a new Trek movie coming out next year. Nimoy’s in it, so it might be OK. I think Trek is pretty much spent, though. I watched The Next Generation, never much enjoyed Deep Space Nine, and ignored Voyager and Enterprise completely.

For my money, can Trek altogether and bring back Firefly.

BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!!!

Back in high school, Bruce Springsteen was the bee’s knees.

I remember seeing him in concert in 1984 at the L.A. Sports Arena during the Born in the USA tour, sitting up in the nosebleed seats. It was a quasi-religious experience. The concert lasted well over three hours, and after the last chord had been played, I still wasn’t ready for it to end. I saw him again the next year when he came back to L.A. and played the Coliseum. We were sitting so far back that the music was almost a full second or two behind the video screens, given the fact that light travels faster than sound. It didn’t matter. Bruce delivered. When I had bought the tickets, the show was supposed to be the last one on the tour, but Bruce ended up adding another show a few days later. I didn’t have tickets to that one, but I went down to the Coliseum anyway, and, along with thousands of other fans, I huddled around the walls of the stadium just to listen to what I couldn’t see.

(Those concerts, incidentally, make up the bulk of the recordings on his huge Bruce Live: 1975-1985 collection. If you listen to the crowd screaming during those bits, you're listening to me.)

The next time I saw Bruce in concert was in the early ‘90s on his Human Touch/Lucky Town tour. No E Street Band. No Clarence Clemons. It was OK, but it was less than what I’d remembered. I wasn’t a teenager anymore, and I discovered that Bruce wasn’t a demigod. It was a harsh lesson to learn.

Even so, I still felt it was my responsibility to dutifully purchase anything that Springsteen churned out. Even after the disappointing concert, I was one of the first guys in line to purchase The Ghost of Tom Joad. That album, for those of you who haven’t heard it, is a self-indulgent, whiny piece of crap. It was only then that I realized how much of Springsteen’s music is built around the whole concept of victimhood.

For every “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road,” where scrappy rebels celebrate lives of danger and freedom as they blaze off on motorcycles into the night, Springsteen gives us didactic sludge like “Youngstown” from the Tom Joad album, where a working class guy moans and whines about how tough his life is because of dark Republican forces beyond his control. Or “The River,”where a guy knocks up his girlfriend and then can’t find work “on account of the economy.” Or even “Born in the USA,” which, despite its anthemic presentation, is actually a savage mockery of anyone who dares to believe in the American Dream.

I soured on Bruce for awhile.

Then came 2002’s reunion with the E Street Band and the album The Rising. I had heard good things about it, and I decided to give it a chance. It was everything it should have been and more. Written primarily as a response to 9/11, the album celebrates instead of whines. Bruce’s characters grieve for the loses they’ve incurred, but they’re still able to “come on up for the Rising.” The album highlights victims, yes, but it doesn’t dwell on self-pity or recrimination. Like the best of what Bruce has done, The Rising is an exercise in joy. I’ve played that CD a zillion times, and I still get a kick out of it.

Alas, for Bruce, the wallowing was to return with Devils and Dust, an anti-war screed sans E Street Band. I didn’t even bother to pick up the Seeger Sessions. Unless the E Street Band is involved, Bruce tends to wallow in lefty bilge. And there was all the John Kerry campaigning and overt political blech in the intervening years. I've never understood why so many entertainers go out of their way to alienate half their audience, and I think he would be disgusted to know that he actually has Republican fans like me. But that's a story for another day.

All this leads to today. I’ve pre-ordered his new CD Magic from iTunes, and I’ve heard his new single “Radio Nowhere.” It’s pretty good. The E Street Band helps a lot. But I’ve also been warned of left-wing bile therein, including a song based on John Kerry’s comment before the Senate about being the last man to die for a mistake. Yikes. I hope there’s enough joy elsewhere on the album that I’ll still be able to enjoy it.

I’ll let you know.

Say NO to Transporter Technology

Orson Scott Card wrote a wonderful short story entitled "Fat Farm" which tells the story of obese people who go in and have their brains duplicated into new, thin bodies. The problem was that the old bodies were still around, too, and terrible things ended up happening to them. For my purposes, that’s neither here nor there. The point is that the New, Thin Body Guy – NTBG for short - had the illusion of continuity from before and after the transfer. In NTBG’s mind, he was the same guy as the fat guy who came in before the transfer. But he wasn’t – that fat guy was still alive. Well, imagine if the fat guy, instead of being left behind, was summarily executed after the memories were duplicated in NTBG’s brain. Yikes. Wouldn’t that be a bad thing?

Well, that’s exactly what happens every time someone from Star Trek steps on to a transporter platform.

Transporters break down matter into energy, and then use that energy to reconstitute the matter in a different location. Yet the newly reconstructed matter hasn’t truly been transported – it’s been duplicated. The atoms and raw material used in creating the new James T. Kirk on the planet’s surface would undoubtedly be different than the ones that were converted to energy in the Enterprise’s transporter room. That means that, while the new James T. Kirk would, like Card’s NTBG, function and feel as if he were the same James T. Kirk who had been blasted into energy up along the Enterprise, he wouldn’t be. That James T. Kirk is dead. But nobody mourns him, because the duplicate has seamlessly taken over his life.

Several Star Trek episodes address this tangentially while ignoring the central moral dilemma this poses. In an early Trek episode, the transporter produces a Good Kirk and a Bad Kirk, and then it combines the two back into the Regular Kirk. Can anyone really argue that any of those three Kirks is really the same being that first stepped onto the transporter platform? What about the TNG generation episode where a transporter mishap creates a second Riker who’s left behind on a planet while the “real” Riker beams back aboard safely? Or all the episode where people’s transporter “patterns” are used to reverse medical problems and “fix” things? Wake up, people! Transporters are killing people all the time and making new people in their place! Why is that OK?

Some may argue that, since the series of duplicate James T. Kirks have maintained the illusion of a single, linear life, that we shouldn’t worry about it. This is deeply misguided, as it demonstrates a contempt for the unique value of an individual human life.

Others may argue that since transporter technology doesn’t actually exist, and I’m getting all worked up about fictional nonsense, that I should actually get a life. To those who think thus, I weep for your lack of imagination, and I scorn you preemptively to compensate for my own strange compulsions, as evidenced by my vintage Battlestar Galactica lunchbox.