"Looks like we've made it..."

The well-oiled machine of Apartment 204 is picking up speed...

A week ago the posse (minus Dave, who is still at Second City) gathered at Chidsey's place to pay homage to the great green screen in the sky and shoot the follow-up to "Livin' in the 801." Can't give too much away, but the newest offering will have a hint of the "Dark Knight" to it, along with some absolutely fabulous hairpieces. Should be up and running before too long ("too long" meaning anywhere between a week and six months or so, depending on how far the Jazz go in the playoffs and if our raw footage gets abducted by alien videophiles).

In the meantime, "Livin' in the 801" has continued to rack up hits on YouTube, over 22,000 at the last count. Even better, we're getting lots and lots of offensive comments, which is always a good sign for any online offering. You know you've made it when people start going out of their way to tell you how much they hate you.

More importantly, as of last weekend we have also seemed to pick up a rather unexpected following. Apparently Trails, one of the Salt Lake Valley's finer strip-club establishments, has gotten into the habit of running our clip on one of its video boards. I'm not sure if this means the employees are performing to the song or if it is merely background enhancement, but either way, Trails' owner has offered the services of his cast for any of our future video shoots, free of charge.

(Pause to digest last item...)

Yeah, so things are looking up for Apartment 204! If you get a chance, take another look at the clip, and go join the Facebook fan page. Before long we should have bio's on our homepage, along with a special homage clip to all our haters.

Boo-ya.

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.

Divide and Conquer

If you haven't noticed yet, The Wounded Mosquito has been going through some growing pains lately. I basically thought, "hey, if I can maintain a low readership with one blog, why not spread it even thinner with four?" Seriously, though, in an effort to make my writing a little more subject-specific, I've decided to take a few of my major themes and give them their own forums. That way, if any of them picks up any steam, I could actually get them into something other than a generic blog roll, and then maybe I can stop making jokes about my low readership.

Part of this has to do with one of the other big reasons I haven't posted to the Mosquito much lately. For the last two and a half years I've been working on a non-fiction project, and at the end of last year my efforts to finish it have increased greatly. Now, in order to convince a publisher to get my little project in print, it might help if I had a bit more credibility as a writer. As in, an actual audience.

(This is a big hint here, folks...if you've ever considered becoming one of my official "followers", now would be a good time).

I'm also anticipating that by subdividing my blog, I might also increase my productivity, meaning more posts of a shorter length. For the most part this blog has served as a conduit for continuing my full-length columns, which is another reason I don't post as often. But maybe it's time to fire off a little more frequently.

Anyhoo, here's a quick introduction to the spawn of the Wounded Mosquito:

The Wannabe Jock

This blog will carry all my exclusively sports-related posts, most of which I expect will be about the Utah Jazz, since they are pretty much the only sports team I carry any substantial loyalty to these days. But I'll also include the occasional anecdote from my semi-athletic past, which will justify the continued inclusion of images like this one from my Jr. Jazz days.

The Obligatory Hendrix Perm

This one is the music blog. It will carry reviews of any concert I go to (side note: I'm already lined up to see Franz Ferdinand, Travis, Smokey Robinson, and Eric Clapton/Steve Winwood...good days ahead, baby), as well as any music-specific commentaries I feel compelled to write.

Celluloid Nirvana

This is the one where I'll post all my movie reviews and commentaries. I might change the name of this one; I'm not sure I like it. The first name I used was "Cinirvana", as in "Cinema-Nirvana", but I thought that was too obscure. I kind of want to use a title that uses the word "Mondo", but then in the process of checking for title availability I found this on Wikipedia:

"Mondo films, often called shockumentaries, are quasi-documentary films that focus on sensationalized topics, such as exotic customs from around the world or gruesome death footage. Similar to shock exploitation, the goal of Mondo films is to be shocking to the audience not only because they deal with taboo subject matter. The first and most well-known mondo film is Mondo Cane (A Dog's World). Others include Shocking Asia and the Faces of Death series."

Since I've never actually seen any official Mondo films, it might be a bit hypocritical for me to name my blog after it. I'll give it some more thought. Stay posted.

Of course, this blog will continue to see regular posting on any topic that doesn't feel like it falls exclusively under one of the other three headings. I guess I could make another blog and devote it especially to dating gripes and moaning about my social life, but who would want to read that? You have to draw the line somewhere.

Tacos Rule!

Kobayashi has his hot dogs. Wimpy and Hamburglar are burger men. But as for me and my house, I am a taco guy. Hard shell, no sour cream, no cheese. It’s all about the beef, the tomatoes, and the salsa, plus some lettuce for color. Some guys can take you to school at the Godfather’s Pizza buffet; but chances are I can take you under the table any day when tacos are on the menu.

I’m not sure when the fascination with tacos began. Could be from back in the 80’s, when there were only a couple of Taco Bell’s in the valley, back before the rat dog ads, when a run to the border was a special occasion for the old familio. Of course, we were still having tacos and Spanish rice at the family table on a regular basis even then, so maybe my mania stretches all the way to the 70’s.

All I know is that the mania probably peaked in 1997, when I started the “10 Taco Challenge” on the South Side of Chicago. Fed up with my lack of female post, I declared to all my roommates that I would personally buy ten tacos for the man who managed to get ten girls to write me. Heaps got the closest, with nine, but I bought him the tacos anyway.

A couple of years later Ryan Patterson, Breto and I shared a memorable evening working our way through a couple dozen of Del Taco’s finest while playing Star Wars Trivial Pursuit and listening to Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother” album. A couple of years after that, my buddy Brandon tried to name me “Taco” in an attempt to give me a half-decent nickname, but it never quite stuck. When I was living in a townhouse in Bountiful with some friends, I even made a primitive short film about making tacos.

Every once in a while, someone tries to convert me to the soft shell team. My dad is always trying to get me down to this stand in downtown Salt Lake that hands them out on the street like they’re going out of style. But no one has managed to turn me on to modern country music, and no one is going to turn me on to soft shell tacos, either.

There’s just something inherently wrong with the soft shell. I have no beef with tortillas; it’s just that to me, a tortilla with beef and hot sauce is a burrito, not a taco. If I want a burrito, I’ll order a burrito. Even the name “taco” suggests a crunch association.

Not too crazy about the meat variations, either. Chicken I can hack, but not fish. My sister likes the fish tacos at Red Iguana. I love Red Iguana, as it is well documented, but I don’t really like their fish tacos.

I don’t hit Taco Bell too often, and I try to avoid getting caught up in the Del Taco rut as much as I can manage. Usually, for me, homemade tacos are the way to go. All I need is some fresh ground beef, some salsa, and a dozen shells to keep me happy. There’s nothing that can match a homemade taco in late August when the tomatoes are right off the vine and the shells are fresh.

I used to get the 24-packs of mini-shells so I could pound tacos like I was drinking shots, but I don’t always see the mini-shells for sale anymore. I’ve also had to limit the quantity of my personal taco-fests, both in quantity and frequency. I used to throw down a full pound of ground beef in a single Fest, but these days I’m down to a half-pound at best. My buddy Sam used to throw down a full pound of bacon at a time; I wonder if he’s down to a half-pound yet. I’m pretty sure he isn’t dead.

A few years ago, during the protests in Salt Lake over illegal immigration policy, I remember seeing this sign that said, “No Illegals, No Burritos”. I can sympathize with both sides of this issue, but when it comes to Reconquista, my tummy says "surrender." Because I’m about as close as you’re going to get to a walking Aztlan.

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.

The Apartment Has Landed

This weekend marked the launch of a new project I'm involved in called "Apartment 204". We're a humor group that will be writing sketch comedy and posting clips and music videos online, hopefully every month or so.

We've officially posted our first clip, a music video called "Livin' in the 801." Be sure to leave comments, and let us know what you think.

The Curious Case of the Calculating Computer

I think I may have figured out why I’m going bald. Three years into my membership at X-Cel/Gold’s Gym, I finally cashed in my free trainer consultation, and his computer told me I have the health of a 43-year-old.

In the time since I have been trying to explain the results:

1. The computer wants me to hire a personal trainer

This is a totally rational argument, given that the purpose of the consultation is to get me to sign up for a personal trainer. It is also rational because I use my body all the time for all sorts of stuff, and I know that I at LEAST have the health of a 42-year-old.

2. My current workouts are aging me

In the last few months, as my schedule has opened up, I have started visiting the gym more consistently, and, in my mind’s eye, more effectively. However, it could be that my slavish dedication to the bench press is actually hurting my overall health. So while it’s cool to be able to bench press a small foreign automobile, I may have to sacrifice that claim to fame for the greater good.

3. I recently grew a beard

In the last few years I have reached a curious stage of life where growing my hair out always makes me look older. This is especially true on the top of my head, where neglected shaving further highlights my bald spot, but it also works on my face. In recent weeks I have grown a modest beard, partially out of reverence for Joaquin Phoenix and partially out of disgust at the current status of my social life, and I’m pretty sure that beard makes me look a good decade older. So it’s possible that the computer took my facial hair into account and said to itself, “Hey, this guy is lying about his age. There’s no way anyone could grow a Kick-A beard like that under 40. I’d better say he’s got the health of a 43-year-old, then get back to work undermining the numbers on Wall Street.”

4. My current eating habits are atrocious

This point is deserving of a special, largely unread column of its own, but I will summarize: my eating habits suck. Bad food at erratic times. But the thing is, the stuff I eat TASTES GOOD. And I still say the Barbacoa Burrito Bowl is healthier than eating two junior hamburgers and a large fry at Wendy’s, no matter what the trainer guy says.

5. My current sleeping habits are atrocious

Sometime in the last month or so I decided to re-watch all of the “Lost” episodes starting with Season One. As I have worked on this Personal Life Goal, I have noticed two things: First, I tend to go to bed closer to 2AM instead of 1AM, and second, there is not a single character on the show who doesn’t have a significant daddy issue.
Observe:

Jack: Alcoholic, overbearing father who dies in Australia and may have been resurrected on island.

Kate: Blew up abusive father, though she thought he was only her stepfather at the time.

Locke: Father is a con man who stole Locke’s kidney and pushed him out an eighth-story window (not simultaneously).

Sawyer: Father killed mother and shot self after being conned by Locke’s father.

Charlie: Working-class father who discouraged his artistic interests.

Claire: Father is also Jack’s dad, via intercontinental adultery.

Sun: Father is either a Korean automotive kingpin who has government reps killed or is connected to the Korean mafia. Probably both.

Jin: Former button-man for Sun’s father, his own father is actually a really good guy, though Jin is ashamed that he’s a fisherman and doesn’t know that his mother is a prostitute.

Hurley: Father is Cheech Marin.

Sayid: No mention of his father, but it’s safe to say that after spending the 1990’s as a torturer in the Republican Guard and a stint after leaving the Island as an assassin for Ben, Sayid’s relationship with his father is at least strained.

Michael: We never meet his father; rather, HE is the father issue with telepathic super-human savant son, Walt.

Ben: Father blamed him for causing the death of his mother in childbirth, so Ben drove him to the top of a tropical mesa in a Volkswagen Bus and gassed him to death while listening to Three Dog Night.

Desmond/Penny: We don’t know Desmond’s father (at least as far as I know), but his father-in-law is a multi-millionaire (billionaire?) industrialist who was totally mean to him when he asked permission to marry his daughter. Plus he exhumed hundreds of bodies from a graveyard in Asia to fill a dummy airplane he planted in the ocean to distract search parties while he sent a freighter full of mercenaries to exterminate everyone on the island.

Vincent the Dog: Never knew his father.

I could go on, but you get the point. Either the “Lost” writers have serious issues with their own fathers, or the whole show is trying to make some kind of social comment on the current condition of the family, perhaps connected to absentee fathers or single-parent strains. All I know is it makes me super-grateful for my own dad.

6. The date on my birth certificate was doctored to improve my chances of becoming a pitching phenom in little league.

Yeah, I think we can rule this one out.

7. 43 is actually an improvement

It’s possible that the health glass is really half-full. In the course of discussion with my prospective trainer, he mentioned (without provocation) that failure to get enough sleep actually “ages” you. It just so happens that I recently came out of an extended stint as a television producer where I worked from 1 to 10AM and averaged about four hours of sleep per day (in the afternoon, no less). With that in mind, I’m guessing that if you had measured my health at the time the show was cancelled, the computer would have told me I was 117 years old, which means 43 is a dramatic improvement.

Viva the power of positive thinking. Viva the power of the beard.

Revenge of the GRE

I used to think I was a pretty smart guy. Then I took the GRE.

Ever since that heinous experience eight years ago, I've always gone out of my way to counsel any friend of mine who is getting ready to take the test:

"Keep in mind, it's a test to get you into grad school. It's not like the ACT or the SAT," I'd say.

"It's designed to take top-tier students and spread them out on a measurable spectrum," I'd say.

"Don't worry, it's supposed to be a ruthless, masochistic assault on your sense of self-worth as an intelligent human being that will kick you to the academic curb thinking your only sensible career option is to be first assistant to the guy scraping congealed grease off the floor at Denny's," I'd say.

I never got an exact count, but I felt like I got about 20% of the questions right on that stupid test. On the analogy questions I usually had never even heard of three of the four word options. In high school I passed the AP Calculus test with a 4, but I guess your brain defaults to 8th-grade algebra level if you don't keep using it, because the quantitative section was a joke. For some reason, the analytical section has been wiped clean from my mind. Yet after all that, somehow I emerged with a decent percentile score, at least one that was good enough to get me into Utah State. I guess that means most people do lousy on the thing. They always tell you that programs aren't as concerned with your GRE score as they are with the other elements of your application. Thank goodness that seemed to be true at USU.

Still, once I understood the design and purpose of the test, I was reassured that I might still be an intelligent person. Maybe not as infallible as I thought, but still respectable. One way or the other, I was just glad to have the stupid thing done.

Two weeks ago I took the GRE again.

See, there's one little hitch with the GRE test. The scores are only valid for five years. So no matter how good or bad you do the first time around, if you decide to go back to school more than five years later, you have to re-take the test. You know, just in case aliens stole your brain in the interim and left it floating in a jar somewhere near Saturn.

In light of our recent economic situation--er, MY recent economic situation--I've decided to look into the possibility of going back to school. And to do that, I have to get a new GRE score. That's why two weeks ago I rolled into the University of Utah testing center at 7:30am to take a customized $140 kick in the Jimmy. This time around I decided to study--never been a big fan of studying for standardized tests--because even if my brain wasn't stolen completely, I'm pretty sure that those aliens made off with the majority of my education from grades 9-12.

So now, after taking the GRE twice, I can say that the experience hasn't changed much, and sometimes it's hard to take your own advice. But it's easy to take someone else's advice, so here are a few veteran observations:

Practice your cursive

As brutal as the test, the hardest part of the experience comes before you even enter the testing center. That's when you have to stand outside with a clipboard and fill out the confidentiality statement. The confidentiality statement says that you won't tell anyone about the specific content of the test, but it's not enough to just have you sign and date the thing. That would be reasonable, and the GRE is about torture, not reason. You actually have to copy this big paragraph word-for-word that basically says "I won't tell anyone what's on the test" in about 300 words, THEN sign it.

But even that's not the bad part. The bad part is that you can't print the agreement. You have to write it in cursive. Now I don't know about you, but the last time I used cursive on a consistent basis was in the fourth grade, about a year after I first learned how to do it. Writing in cursive is not like riding a bike. It doesn't just come back, at least not for me. By the time I finished that paragraph--it seriously took me about five minutes--I was praying that the college admissions people didn't factor it into my application.

"Well, his academic record is impressive, aside from the GRE score. I like his portfolio, and his professors seem to think he's a funny guy. Still, if I try to put this school's good name behind a man who writes like a mentally-challenged fourth grader with the shakes, I'll never make Dean, and the boys at the sweat lodge will start hiding my undies again. Betty, better fire up the boilerplate rejection letter..."

The test is on a COM-PU-TER

Now, thanks to that little agreement, I can't say a whole lot about the test content. But I can say that after you sit down, you have to go through a little tutorial before you start. What kind of tutorial, you ask? Well, the first page of said editorial has a little drawing of a computer mouse on it, and above the drawing is the following statement:

"This is a mouse."

Not even kidding. I'd like to think it's just there to serve as a confidence-booster, but something tells me it isn't.

Studying is good

Turns out I'm very glad I decided to study this time. Going in prepared is always a good idea. Before I went to see "Return of the Jedi" the first time, I borrowed my mom's paperback novelization of the movie and learned that the good guys were going to win and that Princess Leia was going to be spending time in an iron bikini, and both points helped enrich the theatrical experience immensely. Studying for the GRE had the same effect. For one thing, I found out that a lot of the questions aren't even really concerned about the specific answer as much as whether you can compare that answer to another answer and ascertain their relationship. After studying this, I still had no capacity to get the questions right, but at least I wasn't surprised on test day when I bombed them.

There is a writing section

Another thing I knew going in was that they had changed the format of the test, and they'd done so to my benefit. Instead of three sections of multiple choice questions--quantitative, verbal, and analytical--sometime after I took my first test they switched the format to two multiple choice sections--quantitative and verbal--and one written section. Not only that, but the written tasks (writing and debunking argumentative statements) are basically identical to what I did as an English composition teacher for over five years.

Advantage: Josh

Again, I can't go into detail on the specific topics I wrote on--even though the complete pool is posted on the GRE site itself--but I can say that I felt pretty good about my performance. I just hope the paper graders feel the same way.

If they can torture you for three sections, why not go for four?

Unfortunately they're still throwing in that Bonus Round where you have to take an extra section of either the quantitative or the verbal questions. Plus you don't know which ones count, so there's no way to just zip through it by picking letter answer combinations that spell dirty words. They claim it's all part of the process of evaluating your score properly and developing the test to better serve both student and school, but I just think they're doing it to piss you off. At least this time I knew it was coming.

Know your school codes

I also knew that at the end of the test I was going to have to tell them where to send my scores. You can pick four schools to get your scores for free, but after that you have to pay to transmit your humiliation. I didn't have four schools to send my humiliation, and that's why the Moody Bible Institute is going to get the results of my test.

What happens in the testing center can stay in the testing center, but there is no refund.

Of course, if you think you did really, really bad, you can chuck the whole thing and not tell anybody. The computer gives you the option of canceling your score at the end of the test, though the fact that you canceled it still goes on your permanent record. They do it so you don't have to be penalized by extenuating circumstances, like heavy traffic, illness, or spontaneous human combustion. Even if I'd done poorly, I don't think I would have canceled it. For one thing, I needed a result to justify my pain. For another, I needed a result to justify my $140. Besides, I'm pretty sure I did good on the written bit, so I'm not going to worry about it.

As for the rest of the test, I still feel like I got about 20% of the questions right, but according to my results, I probably came out OK. Ironically, I scored higher on the quantitative section than the verbal, but I don't think I'm going to take it as a prophetic sign from above that I'm supposed to veer off into engineering or something. Between the engineering people and the humanities people, I'm guessing the latter will be much more impressed by my Ricardo Montalban essay.

Now as long as they don't look at that confidentiality agreement...

A Recommended Book List that Does Not Suck

Everytime I log onto Facebook these days, I see that someone else has filled out this survey to see how many great works of literature you've read off a sample list. I think the list blows, mostly because out of 100 books, it doesn't have a single title from Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury. Therefore I made my own list. It is awesome.

1. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
2. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut
3. The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut
4. Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut
5. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
6. Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
7. The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury
8. Side Effects, Woody Allen
9. The Complete Far Side, Gary Larson
10. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
11. 1984, George Orwell
12. The Great Apostasy, James Talmage
13. On Writing, Stephen King
14. Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman
15. The Lazlo Letters, Don Novello
16. Naked, David Sedaris
17. Can I Keep My Jersey, Paul Shirley
18. The Mason Williams Reading Matter, Mason Williams
19. Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
20. Animal Farm, George Orwell
21. The Alchemist, Paulo Choelo
22. The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis
23. All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum
24. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
25. Don Quixote, Cervantes
26. Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys, Dave Barry
27. How to Be an Italian, Lou D’Angelo
28. 101 Things NOT to Do Before You Die, Robert W. Harris
29. The Two Kings, AJ Jacobs
30. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
31. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick
32. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (Actually just go watch “Apocalypse Now” instead)
33. The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, Vol. 1, Neil Simon
34. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
35. The Outsiders, SE Hinton
36. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
37. In His Own Write, John Lennon
38. The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkein
39. Working, Studs Terkel
40. The Halloween Tree, Ray Bradbury
41. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
42. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque
43. Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor
44. Patriot Games, Tom Clancy
45. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
46. Pure Drivel, Steve Martin
47. I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
48. Dune, Frank Herbert
49. Oscar-Winning Screenwriters on Screenwriting, Joel Engel
50. The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Allen Poe
51. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
52. Burton on Burton, Mark Salisbury
53. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling
54. You Gotta Love It, Baby, “Hot” Rod Hundley
55. Total Impact, Ronnie Lott
56. Hey, I Wrote a Book, John Madden
57. La Barba Magico (aka “The Magic Beard”), Me
58. Your Movie Sucks, Roger Ebert
59. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkein
60. Field Guide to the Sasquatch, David George Gordon
61. 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, Bernard Goldberg
62. The Great Divorce, CS Lewis
63. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig (First couple of chapters…the rest got boring and I never finished it)
64. Hop on Pop, Dr. Seuss
65. The Great Brain, John D. Fitzgerald
66. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roland Dahl
67. The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus: All the Words, Vol. 1
68. Jesus the Christ, James Talmage
69. Pretty much any column collection by Andy Rooney
70. Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, Rick Reilly
71. Without Feathers, Woody Allen
72. Getting Even, Woody Allen
73. Uh-Oh, Robert Fulghum
74. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman (Specifically the poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”…I haven’t actually read any of the other poems)
75. Prophecy: Key to the Future, Duane S. Crowther
76. About the Three Nephites, Douglas and Jewel Beardall
77. With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and It's Hero, Americo Paredes
78. Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, Chon A. Noriega
79. The Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters
80. The Two Towers, JRR Tolkein
81. The Return of the King, JRR Tolkein
82. Wired, Bob Woodward
83. Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars, Ray Bradbury
84. Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, Chuck Klosterman
85. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
86. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
87. Nine Tomorrows, Isaac Asimov
88. How to Eat Fried Worms, Thomas Rockwell
89. The Life of Reilly: The Best of Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly, Rick Reilly
90. Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury
91. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
92. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
93. The Time Machine, HG Wells
94. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
95. The War of the Worlds, HG Wells
96. Personal Journal: July 1991—October 1995, also Me
97. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
98. The Book of Mormon, God
99. Citizen Lazlo, Don Novello
100. The Hardy Boys, #4: The Missing Chums, Franklin W. Dixon

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

Virgin of the Slopes

You don't have to look far these days to see that the times they are a-changin'. After all, the Red Sox have won the Series twice, and the Cardinals just made the Super Bowl. My buddy Brandon got engaged at the tender age of 37, and we all know what Obama just did. I've been feeling a little left out of the fun, so last weekend, after three decades of procrastination, I finally decided to go skiing for the first time.

When you put something off for several years, actually doing it becomes a much bigger deal than it should be. For example, I had never been to a funeral until I attended my paternal grandmother's early last year. I'd had other opportunities, but the longer I avoided them the harder it became to motivate myself to go. Skiing was the same way. Many of my friends have been avid skiers their entire lives, but the longer I put it off, the bigger an event it became, and the less inclined I was to go unless the circumstances matched the magnitude of the occasion.

I had a variety of excuses:

Money: Skiing is not cheap. When you factor equipment and travel costs in with the price of a typical lift ticket (even night skiing is thirty bucks), you've made a modest investment. That investment becomes harder to make when you consider...

Lack of Skill: ...that you'll be spending most of your day on your behind in pain, or staggering around the mountain looking like an idiot. Which can be a serious blow to anyone who...

Overinflated Ego: ...doesn't like doing things he's not good at, or can't at least perform competently after a minimum of practice.

For these reasons, I always figured the only way I'd ever wind up on the slopes is if a girl was involved. After all, when the rubber hits the road, there is nothing better to fire up the single man's engine than to put a cute girl in front of his face. This is the only explanation for why I've ever let anyone talk me into country dancing.

But when I finally decided to go hit the slopes last weekend, there weren't really any girls involved. It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Brighton had a two-for-one deal on night skiing, and the second counselor in my old bishopric got us all free rentals, so I figured I could afford to blow $16 on a crash course at the Brighton Ski School of Hard Knocks.

That's how I wound up sitting next to my friends Tyler and Spencer on a Brighton ski lift Friday night, coasting silently up the mountainside and wondering if I would ever make it down alive as I gazed down at the parade of snowboarders and experienced skiers below me. The rides up the lift were actually one of my favorite parts of the whole experience; it wasn't a super cold night, so floating up through the trees in the darkness actually had a kind of meditative ponderous quality that would have been almost existential if not for the heavy boots that kept threatening to pull me off the lift and down to certain death.

Actually skiing was a very different matter, though the threat of death was also a major factor. By the end of my first run I realized that my skills as a skier are almost identical to my skills as an ice skater: I have no problem staying up, making turns, and going really fast, but I have no ability to stop. On an ice rink, this is no problem; I just go around in circles and weave through people until I get tired and coast into a wall. But on a ski run, thanks to gravity, I just go faster and faster until I lose control and plow headfirst into a tree, a snowbank, or some unfortunate sap who has decided to park his butt in the middle of the run, completely unaware that a 180-pound torpedo is bearing down on him at somewhere just under the speed of light.

One of the first things Tyler and Spencer taught me was how to snow plow; namely, to cross your skis in front of you and push outward to slow yourself down. (Note: by "crossing your skis" I mean to point the tips towards each other; actually crossing your skis leads to a headfirst crash that runs the risk of concussion, broken bones, and a major rip in the space-time continuum). Snowplowing works fine when you're gradually making your way down a gentle bank, but it doesn't help you at 70mph. So whenever possible, I would try to swing back up the run in a wide arc and let the same gravity that worked against me work for me, but when you're stuck on a narrow run--say, at the top of Brighton's highest lift where I had absolutely no business skiing on my first night out--you don't have that much room to maneuver. That's why ten feet from hitting a snowboarder who was taking a cat nap in my path, I suddenly turned and did a head-over-heels back flip into a six foot wall of powder.

Not to say that the evening was completely miserable; far from it. Whenever I did let myself pick up a little speed, I would always enter a brief exhilarating window where I would be cruising down the run at high speed, deftly shifting back and forth as I wove down the mountainside and the trees whipped by me in a blur. It kind of reminded me of mountain biking on a gradual downhill trail, when the forces of nature take over and you feel like your bike has its own engine, sailing you along on a high-speed groove through the canyon. It's like dropping a gear in an early 90's Mazda RX-7 and feeling the engine burst to life as you fly past everyone else on the freeway. It's like zipping along on my old Trek 820 across 79th Street in Chicago after a long day of proselytizing, and the humidity finally doesn't feel so bad as you whip through the Midwestern wind. It's just that on the slopes, that brief exhilarating window always gets slammed shut as I over-correct and pitch forward, slamming the Darth Vader goggles my buddy Chidsey loaned me on the ice while my skis detach and skid across the run towards some five-year-old doing back flips on his snowboard in the half pipe down the way.

So one solution might be to find a resort that has constructed a super-wide, curvy run that has a massive protective net at the bottom to provide safe and sanitary completion for skiers who lack proper stopping capacity. Another might be to use my inevitable fame and fortune to construct one of my own. I could also take the philosophical route and connect my experience to a deeper parallel metaphor whereby humanity as a whole is speeding down the steep runs of mortality, and if we neglect to make the necessary course corrections and employ proper safety techniques, we will fall victim to the systemic socio-cultural subversion of traditional Judeo-Christian ethics by the permissive forces of evil.

Or I could just learn how to stop.

The Yanni Dilemma

A couple of weeks ago my family went out to Five All's to celebrate my dad's birthday. For anyone who has never heard of the Five All's, you're missing out. It's a great spot off Foothill in Salt Lake that serves five-course meals on pewter. The only trick is parking, because the schmuck who owns the oriental rug store next door chains off the parking lot after 6pm. Anyway, the local economy hasn't helped my friends at the restaurant either, so it made my family feel good to be helping out for at least one night.

Five All's has become something of a tradition for commemorative family meals. Most of the time I only go with my family, because the place isn't cheap, and I am. But a while back my friend Elise and I went there to celebrate our 30th birthdays. As usual, the food was great--I had the filet mignon--but that night was special because of an unexpected celebrity presence.

We were making our way through our Scottish Meatball appetizers when Elise noticed something curious about the dinner party that was moving in behind us.

“Don’t look too obvious,” she said, leaning across the table, “but that guy behind you looks just like Yanni.”

“Really?” I said, turning in what I hoped was a subtle fashion.

She was right. There were about half a dozen people in the dinner party, and one of them looked just like Yanni. He was a slight, elegant man with long, wavy dark hair and a stylish mustache. I considered the implications of dining in the same room with the guy from “Live at the Acropolis”. Should I sit up straighter? Do I make loud insightful comments on the food? Do I even acknowledge his presence?

“How much would it take to get you to go ask for his autograph?” I asked Elise.

She smirked. “I don’t think I could keep a straight face.”

Now, I'm no expert, but I was pretty sure that the guy behind us wasn't really Yanni. The entrance seemed off, for one thing. I imagine a guy like Yanni never enters a room without people at his side tossing flowers to stunned onlookers. Plus I had a tough time figuring out what course of events would lead Yanni to the east bench, though if my encounter with George Lucas last year has taught me anything, it is that you can run into a celebrity anywhere.

But whether it was the real deal or not, the guy looked enough like the maestro to get me thinking. I started to wonder if he suffered from some of the same social limitations that I imagined Yanni is subjected to. Once one chooses to adopt a style of dress and demeanor consistent with the fine arts, one is kind of limited to that line of social interaction. Yanni Guy, for example, cannot show up at Iggy’s anymore; at least without turning a lot of heads, and getting a lot of drunk guys yelling, “Hey Yanni!”, “Yo Yanni!”, and so forth. Yanni Guy can’t go to see stock car races, or watch professional wrestling in his underwear. It just doesn’t fit. In fact, Yanni Guy pretty much has to stay fully dressed at all times, unless he takes off his shirt to drink tea on the deck of his Italian villa. But then he has to be wearing cream-colored pants.

This is the same reason I’ve always felt a little bit awkward whenever I’ve had to socialize with my academic colleagues in group settings. Part of it is because I don’t drink, but a bigger part of it is because my Ph.D.-holding peers are more sophisticated than I am, and their conversations with me are limited to an analysis of whether Michael J. Fox looked too old to play teenage Marty McFly in “Back to the Future”. Sure, Dr. Tinnemeyer supported my decision to write my conference paper on Ricardo Montalban’s performance in “Star Trek II”, but would she ever endeavor to write such a thing? I seriously doubt it. And neither would Yanni Guy.

It’s very possible that in today’s culture, only musically-inclined men feel naturally drawn to grow long, wavy hair. A few years ago, there was another guy in my student ward who had long, wavy blonde hair, and he was really into classical music. In fact, I always referred to him as “Blonde Yanni” behind his back. I didn’t refer to him as anything to his face, because I never officially met him, and I could never remember his real name. I can say that he seemed like a solid, upstanding young man who happened to sport long curly blonde locks. I can't say that it ever occurred to me to invite him over to swear at my television while watching a Jazz game.

It is also possible that the man at Five All’s was a Yanni Impersonator, and that he had been hired by the rest of his dinner party to improve their social status and image by making them look more sophisticated and culturally-savvy. I can’t put an exact dollar amount on such a service, but if the cost is within reason, it might be worth bringing him along on a date sometime.

“Hello, Mr. So-and-So, I’m here to pick up your daughter. I'm Josh, and I'm sure you've already met my associate, Yanni…”

That would be more than enough to calm the nerves of any protective father, and it would probably go a long way towards making a good impression on his daughter, too. With Yanni at our side, we could get into any restaurant we wanted, get any seat we wanted, and might even be able to fake our way through conversations with prominent local celebrities.

"Why thank you, Mr. Decker. Yanni and I were just talking about how much we've enjoyed your investigative reporting over the years."

Elise and I never did find out if we were dining with the real Yanni or not. I'm sadistic enough to come up with mischievous prank ideas, but my conscience keeps me from following through most of the time. I always worry that my actions will genuinely hurt somebody's feelings, or even worse. One time I snuck a friend's cell phone and changed a couple of speed dial numbers, then felt horrible four hours later and called her up because I had this terrible picture of her lying at the side of the road after a brutal car crash, bleeding internally and frantically trying to dial her parents to give one last tearful goodbye, only to find herself connected to the Domino's Pizza on the corner of 4th East and Pages Lane in Centerville. So instead we just returned to our previous conversation, which was most likely me complaining about my dating life. Elise, on the other hand, was in the early stages of dating her soon-to-be husband, which is why that was our last official "celebrate each other's birthday's" dinner.

Maybe next time my big day rolls around, I'll give the Yanni Guy a call.

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.

Khan Lives!

In Memoriam: Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009)

Last year we lost Paul Newman, one of the classiest actors Hollywood ever produced. Today, we lost his Latin equivalent. If there was ever a guy who could quote Melville on the bridge of a starship that was about to explode, and totally get away with it, it was Ricardo Montalban.

Montalban was the consummate Latin Lover, starring in all sorts of films throughout the 50's and 60's, but he became an icon through his roles as Mr. Roarke in "Fantasy Island" and as Captain Kirk's greatest nemesis, Khan Noonian Singh, in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". If you ask most Trekkies, they will agree that "Wrath of Khan" was easily the best of the Star Trek movies, and I still think that it's the one film in the series that people who aren't Trekkies would still enjoy.

And the reason is Montalban.

Montalban got into his Khan character the same way Heath Ledger got into The Joker last year in "Dark Knight", and both wound up stealing the show from each film's respective hero. Fortunately, Montalban didn't share Ledger's substance abuse problems, and was able to make it to 88 before he passed away.

"Wrath of Khan" was actually an extension of a narrative from one of the original TV series plots, an episode called "Space Seed", where Kirk and Co. discover a ship full of super-humans who had been in suspended animation since they fled Earth 300 years earlier. Khan is their leader, and when Kirk wakes them all up, he tries to overthrow the Enterprise. By the end of the episode, Kirk manages to capture the whole cult and maroon them on an uninhabited planet to start a new life. At the beginning of the movie, which takes place fifteen years later, Khan and his posse get loose on another ship that comes along, and Mr. Montalban spends two hours going ape-sh@# trying to get his revenge.

It's a great movie. I highly recommend it.

Montalban actually holds a dear place in my heart, and not just because he played a great bad guy. During my first semester in grad school, I was taking a course that had us reading all sorts of books on Chicano Nationalism, which is essentially a political movement based around the idea that the western United States will ultimately be retaken as part of the original Mexican homeland (referred to as Aztlan). Our final project for the class was to write a conference paper on some aspect of the issue, and somehow I convinced my professor to let me write my paper on Montalban, since he'd been fairly outspoken on Latino-Caucasian relations in the west.

At first I just thought it was funny that I was getting away with writing a serious academic paper on the guy who played Khan in an old Star Trek movie, but the more I learned about him, the more I became impressed with Montalban's character. He was a very passionate man who cared deeply for his people and his community, but his approach to his cause was not angry or combative, and I really admired his clear-thinking, down-to-earth views.

Of course I still spent a lot of the paper talking about Star Trek. I even tried to use a clip from the movie when I presented my paper at the end of the semester, but the DVD player wouldn't work. (If anyone is actually interested in reading a 15-page paper about Ricardo Montalban and his relationship to the Chicano Movement, you can find it here).

After finishing the project, I always intended to contact him or his organization and at least express my appreciation for his work. He really seemed like a class act, and I thought that he might appreciate what I had written about him. But sadly, I never did, and I suppose it's too late now.

At least I've still got "Wrath of Khan" on DVD. I've always thought it would be a worthy choice for a "Movie Night". Maybe now is the appropriate time.