Further On Up the Road: 2010 Epic Summer Film

For anyone who wasn't able to make it out to Sugarhouse Park last weekend, here is my submission for the 2010 Epic Summer Film Festival, "Further On Up the Road:"



Unlike my previous Epic Summer submissions, I didn't go for the mockumentary this time. This piece is more an attempt to tie together the different interests I was pursuing over the summer, and pull out some kind of common theme. Near as I can tell, the common theme was Rock and Roll. From the band I played in to the bands I photographed to the road trips I took, music seemed to play a dominant role in the experience, much more so than humor, anyway.

A number of people thought I should have identified all the locations in the photos and video clips in the film. Since I didn't, I'll list some of them below:

• Arches National Park
• Canyonlands National Park
• Seattle, Washington
• The Jimi Hendrix Memorial, Washington
• Sturgis, South Dakota
• Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming
• Mount Rushmore National Monument, South Dakota
• Cody, Wyoming
• Quake Lake, Montana
• Antelope Island, Utah
• The Layton City Amphitheater
• The Bountiful Days of '47 Parade
• Yellowstone National Park

If anyone has a specific question about any of the images or clips, feel free to leave a comment.

My 2010 Road Trip By the Numbers

1,800: Approximate mileage of the entire road trip, starting in Bountiful, north to Yellowstone, east to Devils Tower (and then Mount Rushmore), south to Nebraska, and west on I-80 to home.

583: Photos taken on the trip.

867: Number of dead bug bodies that are still blasted across the front of my car.

30+: Gas mileage for the trip.

6: States I covered during the trip, including Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and thanks to my GPS, Nebraska.

3: Fridge magnets I picked up to commemorate the trip.

2: National Parks I drove through (Yellowstone and Wind Cave).

5: Times I wondered if I should have ordered two burgers instead of just one at Maddox on the way up, because they're just so darn good.

15: Mph rate posted on the new speed limit signs along the dirt road by my family cabin.

1: Batch of fresh salsa I made at the family cabin, officially kicking off the fresh salsa season.

1,000: Number of people in attendance at the Island Park Ward sacrament meeting.

650: Pound-weight of the boulder my friends and I rolled into Quake Lake on Sunday afternoon because we got bored with skipping rocks.

1.5: Rainbows that showed up at Devils Tower the evening I arrived.

.42 Percentage of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" that I watched on my laptop inside the borrowed tent I had set up in the dark in a $12 camping spot under the tower while a windstorm tried to blow me away.

9: Deer I encountered at 5:45AM while driving in for some sunrise shots of Devils Tower.

17,000: Bikers I encountered on highways between Devils Tower, Wyoming and Custer, South Dakota, thanks to the annual biker rally in Sturgis which was taking place the same week.

17,000+: Bikers I encountered while cruising the main drag in Sturgis, which is located just off I-90 in-between Devils Tower and Mount Rushmore.

18: Length of the horns (in inches) that were sticking out of the helmet of one of the swarm of bikers that visited Mount Rushmore with me.

7: Times I encountered the Biker Mama of My Dreams at the Mount Rushmore Gift Shop, but failed to speak to hear out of fear that she would stick me with a shiv.

117: Extra miles tacked onto the total trip because my GPS told me to go south into Nebraska after Mount Rushmore instead of cut diagonally across Wyoming like the Google Maps thing suggested.

75: Times I had to hit the brakes, deactivate my cruise control and drop 20MPH because a clump of semis were trying to pass each other and blocking both highway lanes.

8: Times AT&T dropped my call home along I-80 while my parents were trying to help me research room prices for Wyoming motels.

0: Dead bodies under my motel bed in Rawlins, Wyoming.  (If you'd been there, you'd have been excited, too.)

7: Times I wondered whether I should make an extra spin north to Maddox once I emerged from I-84 just south of Ogden before completing the journey home, because their burgers are just so darn good.

Double Rainbow at Devils Tower

Yesterday I finished a road trip that covered 1,800 miles through six states in six days.  Along the way I stayed a night at Devils Tower in northeastern Wyoming, and just before I arrived, I caught this off the highway.

I dropped the sound for the first several seconds because a Marvin Gaye song was playing on the car stereo in the background, and YouTube sends me these threatening e-mails whenever I post something that has external music on it.  You know, because YouTube is a champion of copyright honesty.

The Siren Calls Again...

This means something.

The Streak

On the night of June 27th, 1998, I sat in a fifth-wheel trailer in Island Park, Idaho, scribbling in a black ten-dollar hard-bound journal from Deseret Book.  I'd finished my first year of school at the University of Utah after returning from Chicago, and had just arrived at the family place outside Yellowstone for the first time since before I'd left.

Twelve years later, I still haven't missed a daily entry.

As much money as I've spent on camera lenses, computer equipment, and retro Air Jordan's, there is nothing as valuable to me as the ten journals I've filled in the last dozen years.  It's cool to think that I could go back to any day from that period and tell you exactly what I was doing.  All too often in life we worry about the things we haven't done, but journals are a nice way to remember what we have enjoyed.

Here are a dozen examples from the last twelve years:

• Met George Lucas, Ray Bradbury, and Luke Skywalker.
• Taught English composition to firefighters in South Jordan.
• Got paid fifty bucks to be a bouncer at a Saltair young adult dance.
• Been a Best Man twice.
• Totaled a 1964 Mustang.
• Saw James Brown in concert.
• Saw Sammy Sosa hit a home run at Wrigley Field.
• Ate a raw Habanero pepper.
• Finally scored a goal in an official rec league soccer game (that wasn't for the other team).
• Won a fresh salsa competition and a chili cook-off.
• Sang lead for a real Chicago blues band at The Blue Chicago.
• Got mugged in The French Quarter.

Here are twelve things I'd like to accomplish in the next dozen years (assuming civilization is not wiped out by a zombie/robot apocalypse first):

• Watch a movie at either The Spud Drive-In outside Driggs, Idaho or The Sky-Vu Drive-In south of Monroe, Wisconsin.
• Become an uncle.
• Get a book published.
• Buy another Mustang.
• Visit the old Tatooine set from the original "Star Wars" shoot in Tunisia.
• Lose enough weight to fit the medium sized "Elvis meets Nixon" t-shirt gathering dust in my dresser.
• Sit courtside for a Jazz game...in the Finals! (Brother's gotta dream, right?)
• Have someone throw their underwear at me while playing drums onstage.
• Reach 100 "followers" on this dumb blog (this is a hint).
• Get Natalie Portman's phone number.
• Convince people to finally start referring to my friend Bill as "Dr. Thunder."
• Bench press 300 lbs.

Potentially Lame Half-Grateful/Half-Griping Official Thanksgiving-Related Post (with links!)

A few thoughts that rolled through my mind as a late meal from Taco Time rolled through my digestive system at 6AM...

-If my dad's side of the family is the Utah Jazz, then losing both my grandparents last year was kind of like Stockton and Malone retiring.  You knew it was going to happen, and you knew that things would never be the same afterwards.  But thanks to a few draft picks and free agent signings (IE, births to my cousins in Oregon, my sister getting married), the team will eventually claw its way back to contention, even if we miss the playoffs for a season or two in the meantime.

-More than ever, I want the real Utah Jazz to win an NBA title, if only because I never want to hear the folks on the radio have to debate whether our state's first major pro sports title is this week's Real Salt Lake MLS triumph or the Utah Stars' ABA title back in 1971.

-It's more important than ever that we find opportunities to laugh at ourselves.  Fortunately, we have the Internets.

-(WARNING: POTENTIALLY SEXIST COMMENT ALERT) I used to think that the most obvious sign of the Apocalypse was a middle-aged woman driving a white Mercedes SUV.  Now I am more inclined to think it is the blond 20-year-old trophy wife driving her only child around in a black Cadillac Escalade.  (And yes, this observation is at least partially based in petulant jealousy...of the wife, not the Escalade.)

-(MAKE-UP COMMENT TO ATONE FOR PREVIOUS OFFENSE) Men are stupid.

-I made a big deal out of getting bumped from my singles ward at the end of last year.  I think the reason I made a big deal out of it was that deep down I knew how socially dependent I had become on the membership, which was not a good thing.  Now, a year later, I think I have officially passed the point where even if invited, I wouldn't go back.  Because that would kind of feel like going back to Prom.

-Leaving the aforementioned ward may have been a shock to the social system, but the aftermath has reinforced the value of my immediate family and longtime friends.  IE, the people I will still know and love ten years from now, as opposed to ten days from now.  Spending less time at ward activities has meant more time with them, and I'd venture to say it's been time well spent.

-I am very grateful to be back teaching again, in spite of the associated hassles.  Still, it might be time to start putting a few more restrictions on student paper topics.  This was never a problem for my first five years of teaching, until one intrepid student decided to write his division/classification paper on the Kama Sutra.  This semester, of 40 persuasive argument papers, a record seven papers have been written on some aspect of drug legalization, including four that specifically advocate the legalization of weed.

Sigh.

Here is an actual comment I made on one of the aforementioned papers:

"To put it simply, if you want to  overcome the stigma attached to pot, you should probably avoid basing half of your evidence on material from a source called 'Half-Baked: a Pot-u-Mentary.'"

-We're only four episodes in, but I am thankful for the return of "V" to prime time television, if only because it serves to remind me that I'm not the only guy out there who can be suckered into supporting a clandestine alien invasion through nothing more than a pretty face and a tailored jumpsuit.

-I'm very grateful for long winding back highways like the PCH in California and Highway's 32 and 34 in Idaho.  There's nothing like getting a little open road perspective at 70mph as the wind whips through your (imaginary) hair and you drive by some of the great back road icons of Blue Highway America.

-Getting laid off from KJZZ cost me some financial security and the chance to get on TV once a week, but in the time since, I've been able to write a book and develop a new career, neither of which would have happened had I still been surviving on four hours of sleep a day.

-Life will always have its frustrations, and I'll always have plenty of reasons to gripe.  But if you understand that life is about agency, and not about justice, the pill is a bit easier to swallow.  Besides, in the end, if you can still relate your existence to a Fine Young Cannibals song, you're probably doing OK.

Going Coastal: The Movie

Another Epic Summer is in the books. Last weekend, my short film, "Going Coastal: A Manly Guide to Unemployment" debuted at the 7th Annual Epic Summer Film Festival. This was the third time I've participated in the event, and my 2009 entry--a chronicle of July's epic road trip, dedicated to the victims of last year's economic meltdown--seemed to go over pretty well. It's always nice to get a positive reception from a crowd that doesn't already know you or have any legal or familial obligation to like your stuff. Special thanks to Brian and Jen for giving me the bully pulpit.

For those of you who couldn't make it, or for those of you who just couldn't derive total satisfaction from a single viewing, here's the web-friendly version:

Reconciliation

Sometimes it's hard to put your heart into a new relationship when you're still struggling to let another one go. Even if you know that things will never be the same between you, hope dies hard, and it can take a toll on any of your future efforts until you find closure.

I'm talking about cars, of course.

Four years ago I begrudgingly traded in my 1996 Nissan Maxima. We'd been together for over five years, and had logged nearly 100,000 miles together, back and forth to Vegas, to Yellowstone, all over, really. I don't know how many dates I went on in it, or how many times I dropped her into 4th gear, changed lanes and blew past someone on the freeway. We had some good times.

It was my longest relationship in a long history of memorable auto-owner partnerships. Before the Maxima there was the '64 Mustang, the '63 Dodge, and of course, my first ride, the '83 Honda, the Bluesmobile. I had some good times in those cars too, but none of them could boast the longevity of the Maxima.



Still, after five and a half years of V-6 powered cruising up and down the Wasatch Front, time took a toll on my beloved Nissan. After tolling up two grand worth of repair bills in less than six months, I knew it was time to move on. I hated to do it, but I knew it was the right thing to do. That's how I wound up over at Rand's Auto Sales in November of 2005, trading in my Maxima for a black 2002 Honda Accord Coupe.

At first I tried to tell myself I was getting a great deal, upgrading to a car with a leather interior and a paint job that finally fit my personality. I even tried calling it The Batmobile in the hopes of forging a quick bond. I tried to look to the future with optimism, but deep down I knew I was having trouble letting go. Trouble that reared its ugly head every time I tried to downshift and gun the engine only to be reminded that a four-cylinder Honda can't jump like a six-cylinder Nissan.

For nearly four years I've cursed the Accord for its performance shortcomings, chafing with frustration because it seems so absurd to be ungrateful for a car that otherwise boasts so many luxuries. But all I saw were the weaknesses, and as a result our relationship has been alienated, strained at best. Only the specter of the '88 Prelude carries a more woeful ranking in my automotive past.

But somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway, all that changed. Maybe it was while I was looking past a hazy shore at an ocean sunset, or while I was trying to stretch out in the passenger seat and get some sleep in Big Sur State Park, but at some point along my 2,500 mile journey, I made peace with my Honda. It doesn't move any faster, doesn't respond any quicker, and the plastic front bumper still pops out of its clips on the right side every once in a while. But the car just feels different. We've gone places together now. We have history. We've blown across Nevada deserts, up coastal highways, and wandered through the Haight-Ashbury District in San Francisco. We've looked up at the stars in Big Sur and wove through the Redwood forests of Northern California. We just crossed her 100,000 mile mark together, and even though it would be nice to pick up a new ride with a bigger engine and all sorts of new features, I think I'll be OK for a little while longer. For the first time, I think I may be ready to let the Maxima go and make a serious commitment to my Accord.

Either that, or I really need to start dating.

Going Coastal: San Diego

The impetus for my mega-road trip was the long-awaited marriage of my old friend Brandon, who was getting sealed in the San Diego Temple. The whole production was a raving success, from the Bachelor Party (Ribs at Phil's BBQ and a viewing of "Hot Rod" in Brandon's hotel room), to the sealing, to the dinner later that afternoon (a burrito/taco buffet that featured some of the best beef and salsa I've had in some time).

In between the sealing and the dinner, a few of us swung down to the beach to hang out while Brandon and his new bride went to go take all their pictures. As it turned out, Brandon wasn't the only one with wedding bells in his ears.

Crossing a Fogged-In Golden Gate Bridge

For your random video clip file...

Here's some raw footage I shot while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge on my road trip last month. I'll probably integrate some of it into this year's Epic Summer entry, "Going Coastal: The Lazy Outdoorsman's Guide to Unemployment."

Stay posted...

Stuff I Learned on My Road Trip to California

A few things I noted while logging 2,500 miles in 10 days through Utah, Nevada, California, and a little bit of Arizona:

1-The single greatest threat to Californians are fresh cherries, even if they were originally grown in California.

No reason for native Cali's to worry, though; the nice man at the inspection blockade confiscated my three-pound Costco bounty. I was worried there would be another checkpoint on the way out of the state, but fortunately they were only stopping inbound traffic. I did find it ironic that the I-80 checkpoint is located in Donner Pass, though.

2-Highway ignorance knows no state boundaries.

Contrary to my previous assumption, Californians struggle with the "yield the left lane" concept every bit as much as Utahns do.

3-The San Diego Temple lives up to its reputation.

It seems the designers of the San Diego Temple came from the same "let's make this thing loom up over the highway and scare the crap out of everyone" school of thought that the DC Temple designers did. The first time I saw it as I swung south on the I-5 coming into San Diego, I could only wonder what goes through the minds of non-LDS folks when it springs into view.

Driver: "What on God's green earth is that?"

(sound of brakes squealing)

Passenger: "Funny you should use that expression, Earl. That happens to be the Mormon Temple."

(car horns blare)

Driver: "Mormons, eh? Aren't they the ones that drive buggies and raise barns with Harrison Ford?"

(the crunch of distant bumpers)

Passenger: "No dear, you're thinking of the Mennonites. I don't think the Mormons are very tight with Harrison Ford. Though I think Robert Redford lives among them."

(an SUV bursts into flames)

Driver: "Oh, kind of like Sigourney Weaver in 'Gorillas in the Mist.'"

(a dog barks in the distance)

Passenger: "Yes, I imagine so."

4-You should always carry cash in California.

There's a saying that suggests any trend that starts in California will eventually spread to the rest of the nation. If that's true, then debit cards are on their way out. It felt like half the time I tried to make a purchase out there I found out the vendor only accepted cash. The strangest encounter took place on Santa Monica Pier, where I stood at a table full of the typical tourist crap and prepared to buy my customary fridge magnet. When I asked the owner of the kiosk if he took cards, he grunted at me and said, "Cash only. Money talks, man." For a moment I wondered if I should let him know that debit cards ALSO constitute an exchange of money, but then I figured that it would be a waste of time to argue economics with a man who chose to make his living selling fridge magnets on a pier.

5-It is possible to sleep in my car. Not probable, not effective, and certainly not comfortable, but possible.

On two different nights during the trip, I was faced with spending a night in my car. At my $25 slot in the Big Sur State Park campground, I also had the option of sleeping on a nearby picnic table. Sadly, that wasn't very successful at all, partially because of the hardwood table, and partially because the foam pad I'd brought along was approximately 2.4 millimeters thick. Actually, the worst thing about the table was that it sat only 50 feet from the glowing windows in the bathroom complex, which meant that everytime someone tried to use the can all night, they walked out the door to see a glowing bald head sticking out of a sleeping bag on a nearby picnic table.

6-Shark tastes a lot like fish.

Last time I came through San Francisco, I had shrimp that came in at two inches WIDE. (That partially made up for the fact that it cost me $12 to eat four of them.) This time I decided to walk the wild side by ordering shark at a spot on Fisherman's Wharf. It wasn't too bad, really. I think the coolest thing is the feeling of machismo that comes from eating one of the ocean's most notorious predators. Nothing establishes dominance of one's foes quite like eating them.

7-Two of my best friends from grad school live in Endor

During the back half of the trip, I spent a couple of days visiting Jordy and Anna, two friends from grad school who live in a small forest community an hour and a half north of San Francisco called Guerneville. Guerneville is located at the tip of the so-called "Emerald Triangle," where copious amounts of clandestine doobage are grown and distributed every financial calendar year. This small forest community also happens to be the place George Lucas and Co. filmed all the Endor footage for "Return of the Jedi." And speaking of Ewoks...

8-Guerneville is a lot like Island Park, Idaho...if you swapped the cowboys and trading posts for palm readers, organic produce stands, and an annual influx of 33,000 hairy musclebound homosexuals.

Apparently my late July visit immediately preceded the yearly "Bear" gathering/festival/convention/massive nightly bonfire. According to Jordy and Anna, "Bear" is NorCal-speak for a large, hairy gay man.

9-It never occurred to the Utah Department of Transportation that eastbound commuters on I-80 might want to exit the freeway onto a convenient turnout and photograph the famous "Utah Tree" on the salt flats, just like westbound commuters can.

Actually it did. That must be why they posted all those "EMERGENCY STOPPING ONLY" signs on the eastbound lanes.

10-Music still provides a lot of the best moments on the road.

Exhibit A: About a half-hour west of Reno, well after my iPod had run out of power and I had switched over to the half-dozen CD's left in my changer, The Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil" played on the stereo as I drove into the eastern horizon, which at 11:30PM is pretty much like driving straight into a black void. Given the scope of my circumstances, I'd say Jerry Garcia's little road ballad was quite appropriate.

Siren Song of the Open Road

A new adventure is afoot. This weekend one of my closest friends will be tying the knot in San Diego, and I got one of the backstage passes. But instead of score a quickie flight in and out of SoCal, I've opted to take advantage of my "permissive" work schedule and make a road trip out of the affair. The tentative plan? Down I-15 to San Diego, up the coast to San Francisco, back across I-80 to Home Base.

For the most part, the trip will be my own personal auto-walkabout, though I will be visiting a number of friends along the way. The whole production is kind of a red-headed stepchild to the plan BretO and I hatched years ago through a rash of idealistic missionary letters mailed between Chicago and London, a meandering voyage that was to take us throughout the continental United States on a Kerouacian vagabond tour without any scheduling restraints to contain our adventurous spirits. The closest we ever got was a spin out to Chi-Town and back that saw us stranded twice in Heaps' 1989 Pontiac 6000--the radiator was already leaking in the driveway before we left--but these days BretO has three kids and a wife to take care of, so Han Solo will be traveling one Wookiee short.

Whether it's blazing through the endless seas of corn that flank the highways of the Midwest or spitting cherry pits out the window as I weave along scenic Highway 32 in southeastern Idaho while the Teton range stands sentry in the distance, I've always favored a little quality time with the open road. My upcoming trip won't be quite as iconic as Hunter Thompson's race to Las Vegas in his gas-guzzling convertible Great Red Shark, though we will be covering the same ground. (For one thing, I won't have a trunkful of hallucinogenic drugs weighing down the back wheels.) As much as I'd like to make the run in a Mazda Miata or a classic '68 Mustang, the same flexibility that is allowing me to make the trip is also preventing any exorbitant spending sprees.

The trip will cover some ground I missed on another previous expedition. Back in the summer of 2002 my buddy Zach and I cruised a generous length of the Pacific Coast Highway between southern Oregon and San Francisco. That winding journey favored us with one of my most memorable driving moments when we emerged from a 20-mile weave through the depths of the Redwood Forest to see the Pacific Ocean stretch open before our gaping landlocked eyes. In order to make it to Huntington Beach in time to meet another friend of mine for the 4th of July, we had to detour onto the I-5 from the Bay Area down to Los Angeles, leaving the south end of the PCH for another attempt. Seven years later, Zach is managing a family of his own, too. His closure will have to wait.

There is one thing I'm looking forward to more than the scenic vistas and photographic opportunities of a West Coast road trip, even more than meeting up with the friends I plan to visit for the first time in several years. What I'm looking forward to most is perspective. On that first trip down through Northern California, not long after emerging from the forest into that first scenic horizon, I remember looking out over the ocean and thinking about all of the drama I'd left back home, all the fallout from the social and professional purgatory I was swamped in, and how completely irrelevant it all seemed now that I was hundreds of miles away. The headaches of 2002 feel distant and harmless next to the offerings of 2009, but I expect a few miles of highway will do the same trick now as it did then. Someday I hope to feel that perspective wherever I go, without having to drive across state lines or have the gift of a friend's distant marriage as an excuse to find it.

But for now, I'll take what I can get.

Learning Curves

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a car wreck. Seen plenty of metaphoric train wrecks in the last couple of years, but no real-life auto collisions. So this post isn’t inspired by anything tragic. Actually, it’s inspired by a post from a buddy of mine who just managed to squeeze 500 relevant words out of a snowboarding collision. That’s why I think he’s a good writer.

Thing is, his post is about trying to predict the patterns of people around us, trying to compensate for them in order to progress in life without stepping on each other’s toes—or in his case, knocking them off a mountain. Now I can’t relate too well with John’s snowboard expertise; I would be much more likely to be the obstacle in that context. But if you transpose his metaphor to the highways, specifically, the highways of Utah, NOW I can relate.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about the Utah Driving Experience in the sixteen years since Coach Jones leaned against a white Chevy Corsica and initialed my high school driver’s test. Much of that thinking has been employed in an effort to resolve one central conflict: it FEELS like Utah drivers are the worst in the country, but after spending time on the highways on the east and west coasts, I’m not too sure. Coastal driving definitely seems faster, but my Beehive State commutes still seem more aggravating.

But I think I’ve figured it out. Sometimes people want to equate crazy driving with speed, and though that works in some cases, it is not universal. For example, after the time I’ve spent driving back east and on the I-5 in California, I would definitely agree that coastal driving is faster. But the thing is, everyone is driving fast. You don’t have any slowpokes. People may be hustling, but they’re still yielding the fast lane and paying attention to their surroundings. It may be crazy to someone unaccustomed to accelerated speeds, but it’s consistent.

Many of these types of drivers are also found in Utah. I’m one of them. When I decide to go somewhere, I want to get there. I’m far from perfect, but I still try to pay close attention to what is going on around me. But sadly, not all of my Utah counterparts do. Whereas a large part of the Utah driving population could be considered attentive or even aggressive drivers, the thing that makes Utah driving so maddening is the generous population of slowpoke oblivious drivers. And it is this philosophical clash that makes Utah a truly hellish place to commute.

I broke down the various types of Utah drivers on one of my old sites years ago, so I won’t repeat all the details here. Let me just say that people generally fall into one of two categories, attentive and oblivious, and the latter has been driving us in the former crazy for years on end. If someone wants to take their time driving, that’s fine. But that’s what the slow lane is for. And incidentally, even if you’re in the slow lane, you still should be paying attention to the people merging onto the freeway and adjust your speed accordingly—and that doesn’t mean slowing down to 50MPH so everyone can get ahead of you, even though you would pass the merge zone well in front of them if you just continued your previous speed.

But I digress. It’s an easy thing to do with this topic. It wouldn’t bother me so much if it didn’t involve occasional life-threatening situations. Take this, for instance: in the last few years, Utah has welcomed the addition of several roundabouts in certain strategic spots along the Wasatch Front. I think they are awesome; I wish we had more. But my fellow drivers don’t seem to understand how to use them, namely, that when you enter a roundabout, you yield to the left instead of the right like at a traditional four-way stop. It’s not rocket science, but it is annoying.

A couple of months ago, I was approaching the roundabout just south of my home in Bountiful. I was first into the turn, and should have enjoyed the right of way. However, as I made my way through the curve, I saw a pickup truck speeding towards the roundabout on my right side, and he didn’t look like he had any intention of slowing down. I slammed on my brakes as he flew through the roundabout without so much as tapping his brake, and he didn’t even glance over at me as I leaned on my horn. If I had continued on my previous path, I would have plowed right through his driver’s side door and most likely killed him. But luckily, I’m not one of the oblivious people.

Sometimes I think that I spend too much of my time stressing about things other people don’t bother with. That my life would be a lot easier if I didn’t take myself so seriously, if I wasn’t so neurotic about the details. I’m not Jason Bourne. I don’t have spies shadowing my every move. But for one day at least, I’m glad I was one of the attentive ones.

The Wasteland

Mormon Standard Time was one thing, but this was ridiculous. It was about five minutes before sacrament meeting was supposed to start, and as Jared and I sat in his silver Civic outside the chapel, there wasn’t a single other car in sight.

“They must have changed the schedule because of the Temple Dedication,” he said.

We’d swung out to visit a ward at the south end of the Salt Lake Valley that was rumored to hold a liberal age policy for its members. But that was a wash now, because apparently no one had opted to show up. So we considered our options. We could go to the “Mature Singles” ward that met in Salt Lake. We could go to the University Institute and try to find a ward where no one would recognize us, and preferably wouldn’t cover the University dorms. Or we could drive back to Bountiful and go to the family ward I’d been attending since January.

“You realize, Jared,” I said, “we are at the absolute nadir of our single existence.”

There we were, thirty miles from home, two overage single religious nomads in an empty church parking lot. In the aftermath of the Great Geriatric Cleansing of 2008, life had not been kind. I’d been attending a family ward for almost three months, a friendly and outgoing ward which would have been ideal as a newlywed, but as a single guy in his early thirties felt more like the last stop for services on the way to social oblivion. Social opportunities that had begun to feel redundant in 2008 remained so in 2009, only now they popped up half as often, and many felt like surreal reunions of social groups from years past that had been decimated by job transfers, weddings, and death. My jokes about starting a biker gang for U32 exiles were always half-serious, and now they were 75% serious. As those early idealistic days after the mission began to feel farther and farther away, the romantic notion of taking to the open highway on a chromed-out piece of Americana had become more and more seductive. After all, what would we be leaving behind?

Eventually we decided to make for the Institute, and as we passed another lonely car entering the vacant parking lot, Jared was tempted to make the classic throat-slashing gesture the young child in “Schindler’s List” delivered as he stood outside the train leaving for Auschwitz. We were able to make it to one of the wards on campus, but as we settled in to hear speakers wax eloquent on their memories of high school and the assortment of farewells and homecomings they’d been attending, we realized that we’d landed in a dorm ward.

Our cause was not helped by my recent decision to augment my shaved head with a socially defiant red beard. Jared suggested that if anyone bothered us, we might explain that he was there to see a younger sibling speak, or that I was there to serve someone with a court summons.

But no one did, and so after an abbreviated meeting, we fled for the parking lot and made north for Davis County, only pausing for a young woman who didn’t seem to understand the complex protocols of the roundabout. It wasn’t the greatest Sunday, but it was far from the worst, and besides, we had a new week, a new temple, and a new spring ahead of us. Perhaps social deliverance wasn’t far behind.

Even if it came on two wheels and a V-Twin engine.

Two Poems

Here are a pair of "poems" I wrote at Utah State to include as part of my graduate thesis project.

Embrace my Manliness
or
Meditations on the Historical and Cultural Impact of a 300-lb. Lawyer Impersonating Elvis in a Centerville, Utah, Grocery Store Parking Lot (at night).

As Randall shakes his can to Presley's beat,
The local passing patrons pause and stare,
"That hunk 'o burnin' love has happy feet!"

He felt the evening dull and incomplete,
Too tepid, boring and in need of flare,
So Randall shook his bum to Presley's beat.

The public opportunity so sweet,
He parked his van, stepped out, and with great care
His hunk 'o burnin' love found happy feet.

How grand a sight to residents so beaten,
By life's routine conformity--then, there!
Some fat man shakes his can to Presley's beat!

What luck that on the radio that evening,
King Elvis prophesied through summer air,
His song of burnin' love for happy feet

A Knight that night, Sir Randall saved us sheep
And though he's in the desert somewhere,
Still Randall shakes his can to Presley's beat,
a hunk 'o burnin' love with healing feet.

---

79th Street Reflection

Pedaling along 79th street at hyper speed
Evening hangs a heavy drape
On another day of preaching.

We ride for the local outpost
A two-flat
Stinking of Rottweiler
And old wood

Below me-
chrome-alloy steel
Mummy-wrapped in black slashed rubber tubing
And electrical tape
A mechanical marvel of gears and spokes and fiber cords
Affectionately dubbed Thunderlips
Renders the road a swift-speckled streak.

Tenement complexes stare from their broken window eyes
As I ride past
the red brick monuments of Chicago's south side
The dull throb of the streetlight looms quietly
Above the road's
elaborate web of black tarred Band-Aids

Behind me
The illustrious Elder Clark
Labors
On a rag-tag mess of a bicycle
Hybridized from two bikes
A Desoto
And a roll of duct tape

Poor cat, he'll be
hit by three cars in three months

We duck debris of the disenfranchised
passing unharmed through their gauntlet of
Bottles
Bricks
And fists,

Not to mention our share of "kill whitey!" threats.
"Let's get them Honkeys on they bikes!"
Public Access Radio
As we make for the shelter
Of 60th and Talman.

Yet I smile as we cross Halsted
And Farrakhan's headquarters sitting there
Cool and quiet in the summer night
A million-man march
And a million recorded speeches
Yours for only $9.95 apiece

It's a long way back to Bountiful
But it may as well be on the moon
Suburbia is a distant dream
Populated with the pens that write me letters
That tell me of happenings at home

Yet as I fly along that south Chicago street
I am haunted by familiarity
I am institutionalized
I am home

Ballad of the I-70 Soul Soldiers

At 6:15am I rolled out of Orem in a 2006 Jeep Cherokee with my buddy Fabian, two nannies from Salt Lake, and Senator Bob Bennett's great-nephew. Our plan was simple: take a straight shot into Colorado, hit the Killers concert at Denver University that night, and get the senator's nephew out to DC in time for the Obama inauguration. And so in the heavy black of a January morning we cruised out of Utah County to the sound of Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused", armed with four dozen rice krispy treats, two dozen bottles of vitamin water, two bags of Cheetos, some dried mangoes from Costco, and a track list of 25,000 songs from our five iPods.

For the first hour we wound down the perilous treachery of Highway 6 in total darkness, then somewhere south of Price the sun began to shine through the waves of fog that rolled across the frozen eastern Utah tundra while Johnny Cash blared "Sam Hall" through the stereo. As the fog thinned the sunlight blazed more and more intently through the front windshield until it felt like we were driving straight into the presence of God Himself. By the time we made the Colorado border, the fog finally fell behind, and we spent the next five hours winding our way over, around, and through the Rocky Mountains as I improvised a playlist that took us from AC/DC to The Clash to the Beatles in half a dozen moves. Then Tyler the Senator's Great-Nephew took over and served up a round of Killers tracks to warm us up for the evenings' big event.

As attractive as the concert was, we were hardly a pack of Killer diehards. Fans, yes, but only Tyler seemed to know the in's and out's of the complete Killer catalog. For the rest of us, the trip was a perfect excuse to get out of Dodge for a couple of days that happened to feature a great show right in the middle of it. For me in particular, it was a weekend away from unemployment, inversion, and the belabored process of integrating into my new family ward. And with gas prices as low as they've been for the last couple of months, there was no reason to think a quick road trip could be a bad idea.

Thanks to our early run out of Utah County, we checked into our yellow-bricked crash pad at La Quinta Inn with plenty of time to unload our gear, take a nap, and fill up on the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet at Beau Joe's before showtime. Beau Joe's was a local pizzeria chain whose claim to fame was their authentic Colorado-style pizza, which as far as we could tell just meant you put honey on the crust before you ate it.

The concert itself took place in the heart of the DU campus at Magness Arena, a mid-range venue that held somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 screaming twenty-something fans and 2,000 slightly less jubilant fans aged 30-65. Since they'd picked up their tickets three weeks in advance, my comrades landed right smack in the middle of the general admission crowd, five feet off the front rail in direct view of Brandon Flowers' keyboards. I picked up a solo ticket off eBay, which wound up just off stage right on the second row off the floor, at eye level with the musicians.

Shortly after 8pm M83 emerged from offstage and churned out a half-hour of opening tracks, heavy on the drums and synthesizer, and light on vocals. Their style clearly echoed the influence of the main act, and without the Killers' passionate vocals, they sounded almost like a half-hour overture to the evening's showcase. Then as the clock spun towards 9:30 the Killers finally took the stage in front of a wall of light, and the arena jumped to life as they blasted "Spaceman" through the tiny arena. Flowers zipped back and forth on the stage, hopping up on the monitor speakers to egg on the crowd as the band churned through three albums' worth of epic anthemic angst, from "For Reasons Unknown" to "Somebody Told Me" to "Human", with plenty of other hits in-between. Each song was a barrage of Spector-like synthesized Wall of Sound, anchored by rock-solid bass from Mark Stoermer and a flurry of backbeat hammering from drummer Ronnie Vannucci, Jr., who had the presence of mind to mount a fan behind his kit so his hair would blow while he played.

Over on my end, Dave Keuning rotated through a series of Gibsons and Fenders while laying down his assorted lead guitar licks, all the time looking like the one member of the band most likely to fill in for Bon Jovi in a pinch.

The arena pulsed and cheered for every track, but we saved our best response for the most grandiose of the Killers catalogue, "Mr. Brightside" and the set-capper, "All These Things That I Have Done". The finale showered the crowd with confetti and left us wondering what else they could possibly do to top the show, then the band reappeared and blasted out "Dustland Fairytale", "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" and "When You Were Young" to hammer the final nail into the evening. Like U2 and Coldplay and so many other arena bands before them, the Killers connected with the crowd through their music and their message. Far from simple angst, the lyrics captured not only the passion of youth, but the frustration of being older than you deserve to be.

Once the initial buzz passed and we'd knocked down a late-night meal at a surprisingly hip and well-decorated Village Inn, we got Tyler the Senator's Great-Nephew out to the airport on time for his flight, then crashed for a few hours before taking in a local Sacrament service and heading back out on the road for our return trip. In spite of a little fog and a little cold, the highways greeted us with clear asphalt the whole way, a massive stroke of fortune given the timing of our weekend journey. Six hours later as I steered the Jeep west along I-70 towards the Green River junction, the setting sun once again blazed over the snow-capped ripples of Southern Utah, giving the distant peaks a pink glow as Nick Drake lulled out "Northern Sky" through the stereo, and I remembered once again that sometimes the best way to get out of a funk is to get out on the open road.

31 moments from 31

Tuesday night as I was driving alone on I-80 towards the sunset, Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" played on my stereo, and I was reminded that most of life's best moments are the simple ones. Last Friday I turned 32, and though I can present plenty of evidence to suggest that 31 was a lousy year, I can count a lot of blessings, too. So I've assembled a list of 31 of my most memorable "moments" at age 31. A few are bittersweet, but most are just sweet, and even if they aren't very interesting for anyone else to read, they make me feel better for acknowledging them.

1. November 3rd, 2007: Halfway through The Last Starfighter's performance of "Money" at the U32 Ward Talent Show (Not the Pink Floyd version; our own original song), I perform my first ragged drum solo.

2. November 17th, 2007: After ducking out of the ward service auction, I dance in a crowd of oddballs at the feet of the B-52’s at The Depot in Salt Lake City.

3. November 22nd, 2007: 10 years to the day after returning from my mission to Chicago, I catch a touchdown pass in my first Turkey Bowl in four years.

4. November 25th, 2007: After figuring out how to render old VHS tapes onto my computer, I watch a taped interview with my grandparents from my 12th birthday party.

5. November 29th, 2007: After a lifetime of musical influence, my entire family attends our first concert together when we see Billy Joel perform at Energy Solutions Arena.

6. December 15th, 2007: Following a Red Iguana dinner and a tour of Temple Square, a dozen of my close friends and our dates gather in my living room and fight over a two foot white porcelain cockatoo while Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” plays in the background.

7. January 4th, 2008: Three hours after entering the Thaifoon at The Gateway, my date and I are still at our table chatting away when a vacuum cleaner starts in the distance.

8. January 6th, 2008: While transitioning into my new graveyard work schedule, I stagger up to the U32 pulpit during fast and testimony meeting and out Katie and John’s dating status in the middle of a sleep-deprived ramble.

9. January 21st, 2008: Andy Waits says "the KJZZ Cafe is now open for business" live for the first time, and I officially become a TV producer. The next day Scott Pierce of the Deseret News rips us a new hole. Ten months later, we're still going strong.

10. February 2nd, 2008: I drive through Bountiful to Grandma Terry's funeral listening to The Stones play "Shine a Light".

11. March 8th, 2008: On a sunny day in winter, Dad and I weave a red Honda S-2000 at 85mph through Saturday traffic on I-15 with the top down.

12. March 17th, 2008: High up in the upper bowl, I jump up and snag one of those promotional balls that are fired up from the court via slingshot at Jazz games. My one-handed grab becomes a symbolic transitional point in a difficult year.

13. March 20th, 2008: Breto and I get down with 150 other people in Kilby Court in Salt Lake while Jonathan Richman plays "I was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar" a few feet away.

14. March 23rd, 2008: A number of confused ward members laugh as Bishop Greg Kjar sustains me as the U32 English Tutor.

15. April 11th, 2008: An employee at Barbacoa gives me a free lemonade because I had to wait for the transition between the breakfast and lunch menus. Within the hour I am at home enjoying one in a long line of Barbacoa burrito bowls w/pinto beans, spicy pork, two scoops of Pico de Gallo, and one scoop of the hot sauce.

16. April 13th, 2008: After giving an abridged talk at the U32, Mike Driggs tells me he’s never heard anyone refer to dropping acid in a sacrament meeting before.

17. April 22nd, 2008: As I complete a wait that began in the seventh grade, I stand in Randy’s office and try on the pair of Air Jordan IV’s I ordered off eBay…and discover that they are about a half-size too small.

18. May 16th, 2008: I stand in a crowd of 20,000 raging fans in Energy Solutions Arena prior to Game 6 of the Jazz-Lakers series as the pre-game intensity rises to a level I haven't ever experienced in any previous playoff game.

19. June 13th, 2008: After taking Katie around Salt Lake following a string of elaborate clues, I give her a hug and drop her off at the entrance of Red Butte Gardens, where John is waiting to propose by the duck pond.

20. June 18th, 2008: Randy and I enjoy a genuine Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at the Rush Street Giordano’s.

21. June 20th, 2008: Five minutes after grabbing a table at the Blue Chicago, the John Primer Blues Band whips into a cover of Ben E. King's "Stand By Me", and I lay eyes on one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen sitting at the next table...drinking a beer with her parents.

22. June 21st, 2008: I confront director George Lucas at a Michigan Avenue Nordstrom's after he's done trying on a topcoat and mumble an awkward "thank you" while shaking his hand.

23. July 18th, 2008: Heath Ledger pulls the “pencil trick” in “Dark Knight”, and as I leave the Gateway Theater I realize that I want to act again.

24. July 30th, 2008: I stand in a small group with three of my longtime friends at the Usana Amphitheater while Joe Cocker sings “With a Little Help from My Friends”.

25. August 1st, 2008: I make my live television debut on the KJZZ Café, doing a short editorial about Techno-Zombies.

26. August 25th, 2008: I sit alone atop a mountain in Island Park, Idaho and watch the sun rise over Henry's Lake.

27. September 11th, 2008: On a perfect night in early fall, I pull out a borrowed HD video camera and record Katie and John as they dance to the music of a professional jazz combo.

28. September 15th, 2008: While driving home from my right-leaning morning show on the newly opened Legacy Highway, I head to Wal Mart and totally embody Rocky Anderson’s worst nightmare.

29. September 27th, 2008: I take aim at an apple with Glock 9mm near Francis Peak in Farmington and in a moment of rare accuracy, blow it to smithereens.

30. October 7th, 2008: Several hundred fans and I jump up and down in a suffocating mass at the feet of Rivers Cuomo, singing along to “Pork and Beans” at the Weezer concert.

31. October 18th, 2008: I watch Bruce Campbell laugh as he takes a chainsaw to his possessed hand in “Evil Dead II” during Zombie Fest 2008.

---

Of course these weren't all my favorite memories from the year I was 31. I don't put everything on the Internet.

And neither should you.

Here's to 32.

Attack of the Death Worms!

I’ve got plenty of reasons to be grateful I'm an American…pro football, democracy, Yahtzee…but this week, the number one reason I’m happy to live in the USA is that I don’t have to worry about the Mongolian Death Worm.

Now, no one has been able to prove that the Mongolian Death Worm exists, but I've been reading about it on the Internet, so I’m pretty sure it’s real. This thing is one bad mama-jama. It's like five feet long, blood red, and has fangs at the mouth end. That’s pretty bad by itself, but what’s worse is that the Mongolian Death Worm spits yellow poison at you, and the poison gives you electric shocks.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: the five-foot worm spits lightning. If we can prove that it poops thunder, Don King and Sylvester Stallone might be able to get it a heavyweight title shot.

On the evil worm scale, I’d rank the Death Worm somewhere between the sandworms in "Dune" and Dennis Rodman. And I’m super glad that I don’t have to deal with any of them, cause the last thing I need is to wake up in the middle of the night and face down some five-foot earth worm with fangs that wants to electrocute my behind.

Even if the Death Worm isn’t real, there are plenty of other nasty things around the world that are, and I’m amazed that we don’t get many of them in the States. Rattlesnakes and cockroaches are bad, but they don't compare to King Cobras and the Japanese Giant Hornet. And as horrible as our hurricanes are, our natural disasters haven’t caused near as much damage as they have in other places in the world.

So what I’m thinking about now is how we handle all the good cards we’ve been dealt. I don't know that it's enough to just say I'm grateful and then keep to myself. I’ve only been out of the country once so far, and that was to eat at the Hard Rock Café on the Canadian side of Niagra Falls. I had a nasty time dealing with Canadian currency, so I don’t think I’ll go back.

But does that mean that I should turn my back on my Canadian brothers? Should I just leave them to their hockey and their decaffinated Mountain Dew? That can’t be cool. No, I think that when you’re blessed with something you’re obligated to use it to help out the people around you. It doesn't always mean joining the Peace Corps; sometimes it’s just supporting the Jamaican Bobsled Team. It might mean sending the CIA to assasinate some South American dictator. I think the point is that we should be looking for ways to help each other out, wherever they live. At the same time, we have to do it with tact. Just because my neighbor has lawn problems doesn't always mean he wants me cutting his grass. Luckily, when it comes to big world issues, I don't have to make the decision to fire up the mower. But I think we should respect whoever does.

As long as there are people out there getting shocked by Mongolian Death Worms, we should be ready to provide a little insulation.

Of Coots and Codgers

Last month up in Yellowstone, I was heading out from my grandparents' cabin on a dirt road when I passed this old guy on a four-wheeler. As I drove past I slowed down and gave him that little wave that everyone gives when you see other drivers out in the country. But instead of wave back, this guy just glared at me and jerked his hand towards the ground, cause he wanted me to slow down.

As I drove by, I muttered something about this guy just being an old coot. But then I thought about it some more, and I thought that he probably wasn't an old coot. He was actually an old codger. As best as I can tell, the difference between a coot and a codger is that a coot is a crazy old man, and a codger is just a crusty old fart who won't die.


In the world of fiction, the best example of the old coot is Don Quixote, the title character in the book by Cervantes. Quixote is a senile old man who decides he's a knight and rides off on a donkey with a shaving bowl on his head to fight windmills. He’s crazy, but he’s also a loveable character who reminds people to keep cynicism from overwhelming childlike wonder and idealism.

On the flip side, the definitive old codger is Ebenezer Scrooge, the guy who sold his soul to the almighty dollar, wound up all lonely and paranoid, and then started hanging out with ghosts.

In real life, two of my biggest influences growing up were Ray Bradbury and George Lucas. I actually got to meet Bradbury at Comic-Con 2007 in San Diego, and I ran into George Lucas at a mall in Chicago last June. After meeting them both, I think they work as real-life examples of my coot/codger theory.

Meeting Ray Bradbury was like meeting my grandpa. In person, he comes across exactly like he does in his books. He speaks with a lot of enthusiasm, kind of like a little kid, even though he’s in his 80's. He's not crazy, but a guy that old who wears shorts is definitely in coot territory.

On the other hand, meeting George Lucas was a scary experience because I thought he might pull a tazer on me if I tried to talk to him. Lucas is a fiercely independent artist who fought his entire career to do things his own way, and in the process he wound up making himself a social island. He’s prime codger material.

If it were up to me, I'd rather be a coot than a codger; coots might be nutty, but at least they're happy. But I'm worried that I'm going to wind up a codger because of my driving habits. You can divide all drivers into two categories: oblivious drivers and aggressive drivers. Oblivious drivers park in the fast lane and only use their turn signals when they bump the handle while they’re reaching for their cell phones. Aggressive drivers tailgate them and have high blood pressure. I’m pretty sure all the oblivious drivers will wind up coots, and the aggressive drivers like me will turn into old codgers who pull guns on you when you try to take their car keys.

So if you think about it, that old codger in Yellowstone was the future me shaking his fist at the current me, and that kind of blows my mind. It's kind of like I'm an existential self-loathing hypocrite...but maybe I can be a lovable old idealist who isn't crazy and still knows enough to get out of the fast lane when someone comes up behind me, if that's not shooting for the geriatric moon.

Maybe the whole point is that we shouldn't let other people's actions determine our personal happiness...or maybe I should just drive slower on dirt roads.