Mosquito Bites

A few random thoughts and observations from the last month or so…

Election 2008: I think the Republican Party is chucking in the towel on the 2008 Presidential Election. How else can you explain how on one week the party can be criticized for failing to narrow a field of six candidates, then in one fell swoop the only man left standing is John McCain? Seriously, in order to lock up the White House for four more years, they are going to have to convince the general populace that in spite of the difficulties of the last eight years (earned or not), they have a fresh new face who will merit them another chance. And that face is…John McCain?

Super Bowl: For that reason and others, I get the feeling that I’ll be conducing my vote the same way I cheered for the Super Bowl: not that I wanted the Giants to win, more that I wanted the Patriots to lose. I can’t remember a time I’ve enjoyed a game so much just for seeing a team lose. Just for fun, here’s a link to the catch that made it happen: the one that is going to go down for the ages.

Night of the Living Dead: I have become a walking experiment in sleep deprivation. Years ago there was an episode of the X-Files where the government had run a secret program to develop a super-soldier who never had to sleep. Turns out all they had to do was give them jobs in morning television. Two months ago, in preparation for my new job producing the KJZZ Café, I switched over to a 1-10AM work shift, with the idea that I would sleep during the day. Not so. My body still thinks I’m on a regular shift, so when I come home, I sleep for three hours or so then wake up. In the last two months I’ve averaged about four hours of sleep per day during the week. A month ago I went on a date and had to stop to pick up some Visine on the way so my date wouldn’t think I was high, drunk, or about to run the car into a ditch. Even now as I’m sitting here typing (11:14AM Monday), I have been awake since 7:30AM on Sunday.


Night of the Napping Dead: One rare exception to this trend came on Valentine’s day, where after a full shift and broadcast in the morning, I came home, ate lunch (is it still considered lunch if it’s the meal I eat before bed?), and went to bed around 2PM. I didn’t wake up until 10:30. I slept through Valentine’s Day. Now THAT’S how to spend Valentine’s Day if you’re single. It stands as my second favorite VD day ever next to the time I played the USU dance with the Neil Diamond cover band.

(Does anyone else find it funny that Valentine’s Day can be shortened to VD?)


Retro Juice: Tab is one of the most foul, disgusting drinks to ever pass my lips. Last weekend, as part of an 80’s themed party my roommates and I threw—the “Super Fun Happy Pat Morita Memorial Kung-Fu Party Event”—we served some vintage 80’s beverages. I provided some bottled Orange Crush (inspired by the REM song), and my roommate Mark scored some Tab from a grocery store in Orem. That stuff was completely repulsive. It tasted worse than Diet Coke. No wonder it struggled to get out of the 80’s.

(Here’s another reason: check out this vintage Tab commercial. I just wish I could have been in the ad executive room when this thing was dreamed up.)

Method to the Madness (?): After reading my sister’s post on Love, and thinking about her “Love Triangle” theory, I may have come up with a comparable theory to account for the male perspective. Or at least my perspective. Now I just need to decide whether I have enough guts to actually post the thing.

Five-Dollar Word of the Day—“Dichotomy”: The above theory and my current circumstances combine to create a very bizarre dichotomy in my life right now. Even though I am a thirty-one-year-old television producer with an advanced college degree, my choice of ward and my single status enable me to relate closely to TV shows like “Freaks and Geeks” and movies like “The Karate Kid”. Not in a, “I remember how hard high school was,” way, more in a “hey, I’m still dealing with that!” kind of way. In at least one sense, I’m still living in teenage wasteland.

Wrapped Around His Finger: On a more positive musical note, thanks to the diligent effort of two longtime friends, I will be seeing Jonathan Richman, Elvis Costello, and The Police over the next five months.

Impulse Buy: I almost dropped $30,000 on a red sports car. Maybe Teenage Wasteland as an adult is really a mid-life crisis, or more accurately (according to John Mayer) a “quarter-life” crisis. Either way, a week ago I came very close to buying a red convertible Honda S2000 on a whim. What was scary was that I probably could have gotten away with it, too.

Funeral Post-Mortem: Since my grandmother’s was my first funeral, I couldn’t help but constantly refer to the most complete funeral reference I had throughout the entire proceeding: the opening sequence to “The Big Chill”. The one where all of Kevin Costner’s old hippie friends leave the chapel and drive in a big caravan while “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” plays on the soundtrack. Maybe that’s why I played “Shine a Light” off the Exile On Main Street album when I drove over to pick up my parents that morning, and maybe that’s why I’ve thought of my grandmother every time I’ve heard the song since then.

2008 has been a gut-check of a year so far. I’ll try to do a better job of sharing it with you.

Oh, to be a suburbanite...

"Cloverfield"
Three stars out of Four

It’s a bad time to live in midtown Manhattan. First we get Will Smith and a killer super-virus in “I Am Legend” wiping out New York, now we get “Cloverfield”…

The feedback I heard on “Cloverfield” before seeing it Saturday night fell into two camps:

1. It’s awesome.
2. It totally stinks.

After seeing it myself, I can only assume the people who took stance #2 fall within the following categories:

1. People that are very sensitive to motion, as in really sensitive.
2. People that don’t like semi-ambiguous endings.
3. People who just don’t have taste.

I went in thinking that there would be a fourth category, “People who don’t like monster movies where you don’t see the monster”, but they show it plenty. I won’t tell you what it looks like, but I will tell you that it doesn’t look like Godzilla. Or King Kong.

So I can forgive category number one, but not two and three. “Cloverfield” was awesome. The concept was original, the acting was believable, the story was simple but interesting, and the special effects were blended wonderfully.

So here’s the skinny: “Cloverfield” is “Godzilla” without the omniscient point-of-view. Instead of spending two hours watching a CGI monster destroy New York while thinly drawn characters run around and act dumb, you spend 90 minutes experiencing the whole event on the ground with those characters. The only thing you know that the characters don’t is that the movie poster shows the Statue of Liberty with its head missing.

It’s a concept that has been tried before. Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” followed Tom Cruise through the apocalyptic stand-off, and never let you get too far outside of his range of scope. But there were still plenty of birds-eye view shots and other omniscient cuts that gave you a larger view of what was going on. But every shot in “Cloverfield” is taken through a video camera held by one of the main actors (hence the constant motion), so you literally only see what they see. In fact, you kind of see less.

Of course, this requires a little suspension of disbelief in order to buy into the film, but you should already have done that when you decided to go pay eight bucks to see a monster movie. You can make little arguments about realism problems and why the military would be so fully deployed within hours of the monster coming ashore, but the truth of the matter is that this is a film that is trying to ask what it would be like to actually live through one of the crazy monster movies we saw growing up. And it does a great job of answering that question.

A lot of people have been comparing this movie to “The Blair Witch Project”, so I’d feel like even more of a second-rate critic if I didn’t mention it. I can only assume they’re right, because I have never seen “The Blair Witch Project”. I am a second-rate film critic.

“Cloverfield” is the brainchild of J. J. Abrams, who gave us “Lost” and “Mission Impossible: III”, so if you’re a fan of those, you’ll probably dig this one, too. I love “Lost”, and “MI:III” featured Jimmy Cliff on the soundtrack (plus “How do you like me now that I’m crazy?” Tom Cruise), so I figured I was pretty safe going into this one.

I wasn’t disappointed.

“Cloverfield” is rated PG-13 for lots of epic destruction and some profanity, but it doesn’t have the obligatory F-Bomb or Strip Club Scene a lot of PG-13 movies have, so that’s pretty cool. There is this really painful scene where the cameraman is trying to meet this girl he’s into, but other than that it’s all good.

The First Funeral

It took thirty-one years to get me to my first funeral. Geography, poverty, and old-fashioned good luck kept me out of funeral homes for a long time, but this weekend the streak came to an end. At the same time thousands of people were tuned in watching President Hinckley’s funeral on TV yesterday, a much smaller group was gathered in a chapel in Farmington to say goodbye to my grandmother.

The following is an adaptation of the address I gave yesterday afternoon:

If a guest ever attended one of our family meals on Christmas or Thanksgiving, they would probably assume that one member of our family was serving in the military, or had died a premature death, because there was always one place setting at the table that never got used. That is because in over sixty years of marriage, my grandmother never sat at a family dinner table for more than thirty seconds at a time. She was always far too busy managing the operation like a field general in the heat of battle, a sharp-eyed hawk that dealt in casseroles instead of claws.

I always tried to keep busy with my food, because I knew that if I ever paused for more than 3.5 seconds, Grandma would zero in on me like a cruise missile.

“Do you need something, Josh?”

“No, I’m fine, Grandma.”

“Are you sure you’re OK?”

“No, really, I’m fine…”

“Do you want me to make you a baked potato?”

“It’s ok…”

“I’ve got fourteen different kinds of pies in the kitchen…”

“No, no, I’m fine, really…”

Grandpa always did his best to get her involved in the actual meal, but even though his efforts were always genuine at first, they eventually morphed into a kind of obligatory mantra for a cause he knew was lost.

“Mother, sit down.”

“Mother, sit down.”

“Mother, sit down...”

This was the Grandma that I knew as a child. The one that prepared gourmet meals for family gatherings. The one that went out of her way to get generous gifts for all her grandchildren on their birthdays and on Christmas, and the one that would apologize if the cards were a day late. The one that worked so hard to serve the young women in her ward, the students at the Davis County School District, or the guests at the Tracy Club up in Island Park. It was never about her. It was always about someone else. She was more of a force of nature than a relative.

Then something special happened. Sometime several years ago, I got to step behind the curtain and see what happened behind the scenes to create the elaborate production I had seen as a child. My grandmother became more than a great cook, more than a relative, more than just my Grandma. She became my friend.

Maybe it was because after reading two years worth of the letters she wrote to me in Chicago, I was finally mature enough to understand her, or maybe it was just because I was old enough to actually pay attention to all her stories instead of rushing off to coerce my cousins into playing football with me in the backyard. But sometime in the last few years I really began to appreciate who my grandmother is. Our conversations became more frequent and personal, and as I began to open up more about what was happening in my life, she began to open up as well. I began to recognize her strength and her testimony of the Gospel. I began to sense her frustrations and hopes, and she became a confidant instead of just a great cook.

About three years ago she asked me to help her with a family history project. Her mother was a prolific writer and historian, and had typed up extensive personal histories for many of her family members. Grandma wanted me to type up all these histories onto the computer so we could preserve them in a comprehensive record. As I did, and as I read through the stories, I began to understand how Grandma became the kind of person she was. I began to see how she learned important Christ-like principles of faith and sacrifice and hard work, and above all, selflessness. Ironically, she never managed to put together a history for herself. We’d ask her to work on it, and sometimes she’d share little anecdotes from her past, but most of the time the stories were about someone else. Her attention was always on other people.

One story she did tell that always stuck out in my mind was the story of how she and my Grandpa decided to get married. They were only casual friends at first, but when he returned from serving in the Pacific during World War II, he talked her into driving him to Salt Lake so he could make his report to Elder Harold B. Lee, who was an apostle at the time. Somehow she wound up in the actual meeting with Elder Lee, and even though they vehemently denied any serious interest in each other, he suggested they go think things over.

Outside in the car, my grandparents-to-be had the 1940’s equivalent of a DTR, which I can only assume didn’t involve text messaging.

It didn’t involve a lot of romance, either. As the enormity of what they were considering washed over them, my Grandpa couldn’t do anything but tell the simple truth:

“I don’t know that I love you, but I know you’re the kind of woman I want to raise my children.”

You want to know why I’m not married? Genetics.

Luckily my grandmother knew better than to be dissuaded by that gem, probably because she didn’t know if she loved him either. But after some more discussion and a few days to think things over, the two of them decided to take a leap of faith that I’ll always be grateful for.

Over sixty years later, my grandparents were very much in love, and had grown so close that you’d swear they were sharing the same soul. If one of them broke a hip, the other would run the ship. If one of them suffered a stroke, the other would step up again, no matter their previous condition.

I saw this over and over again for years, and saw it again this summer after my grandfather was diagnosed with dementia. My grandmother had been on dialysis for nearly three years, and I started going over on Mondays to hang out with Grandpa while she was gone. But in spite of his own struggle, he was still determined to make sure she got to her bus in the morning. One Monday while they were waiting for her ride, I took a quiet photograph of him as he peeked out the front door, keeping watch while my grandmother waited patiently on the stairs.

As the summer drew on, my grandmother’s condition worsened, and by the time I had to end my Monday visits and start a new full-time job at KJZZ, she was more or less gone. So while the experience of seeing her pass on has been sad, I am happy to see her released from the pain she was suffering, and I have never doubted that I will get to see her again. When my dad and I gave her a priesthood blessing a week before she died, it wasn’t with a sense of mourning or grief, but a sense of gratitude for all she had given. She had fulfilled every task she was sent to do in mortality, and then some. When I looked at her resting at the viewing Friday night, I couldn’t help but feel admiration for the life she completed, and feel that if I can give a fraction of the service she rendered in her time in mortality, I will be in good company. Her life is truly something to be celebrated, and I look forward to talking to her about that again, even if she’s more interested in hearing about what’s going on in my life.

Cool beans.

"Hot Rod"
...One star out of Four?
...Three stars out of Four?

I don’t know where this review fits. This film is already on DVD, so it’s not a new release. But in spite of a soundtrack that features 80’s butt rock kings Europe so prominently, I can’t call it a retro review, either. All I know is I have to write about this movie.

“Hot Rod” is simultaneously one of the worst and funniest movies I’ve ever seen. It is compelling for the incalculable co-existence of its sheer idiocy and brilliant zaniness. I bought this movie.

“Hot Rod” is a less-sophisticated knock-off of “Napoleon Dynamite”, if you can wrap your head around that one. Somehow the main characters in the world of “Hot Rod” are even more stupid and disconnected from reality than Jared Hess’s beloved Prestonites, yet like Napoleon and his ilk, there are enough moments of comic gold that you wind up loving the whole thing. At least I do, and I usually have much better taste in movies than other people.

The story? OK, “Hot Rod” is about a loser Napoleon Dynamite look-a-like that longs for a career as a stuntman so he can both pay tribute to his deceased father and win the respect of the stepfather that recognizes him for the nitwit that he is. Specifically, “Rod” wants to jump fifteen school buses with his moped so he can raise enough money to pay for the heart transplant that will get his step dad into good enough health to allow Rod to beat him back into a pulp, thus winning the desired respect.

Yeah.

On the one hand, this film is such an atrocious rip-off of “Napoleon Dynamite” that a member of Rod’s stunt team is named “Rico”. On the other, this film contains perhaps the greatest homage to “Footloose” ever to grace the silver screen.

On one hand, this film is completely unpredictable, veering off onto bizarre tangents like the scene where Rod and his stepbrother fill sixty seconds of screen time with the phrase “Cool Beans”. On the other hand, this tangent was probably inserted into the film mostly to extend the already short screen time.

On yet another hand, Andy Samburg plays Rod with a delicacy that can only be described as “not delicate”. At the same time, his character ultimately decides to eschew the typical sappy ending most comedies stumble their way into, and instead gives the audience a conclusion that is more satisfying, realistic, and funny. And this ending involves crapping one’s pants.

Worst of all, the leading lady in “Hot Rod” is an actress named Isla Fisher, the token “beautiful girl-next-door who would never in a million years have any interest in Rod whatsoever yet seems incalculably drawn to him and only has to break up with Gob from ‘Arrested Development’ and his red Corvette in order to make it happen.” Fisher also happens to have an adorable Scottish accent in real life. She also happens to be married to this man:



I don’t know what else to even say.

“Hot Rod” is rated PG-13 for some great comic violence, some pretty good comic violence, some mediocre comic violence, some absolutely brilliant comic violence, quite a bit of vulgarity, and periodic reminders that the leading lady is married to Borat.

White dudes in ties

Over the last two weeks, in between ten-hour shifts at the studio and three-hour patches of sleep, I’ve been watching the late 1990’s 12-part mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon”. I’ve developed the habit in recent years of having to watch something on TV whenever I eat, so it’s nice to have something on DVD to watch in 23 or 44 minute blocks instead of wasting an hour and a half for a full movie.

The series was put together by Ron Howard, who also did “Apollo 13” a few years earlier, but this series reminds me more of “The Right Stuff”, the 1983 film that told the story of the original Mercury astronauts. The Mercury astronauts were given the task of just getting us into space, and focused on the stories of Alan Shepherd’s first American space flight, John Glenn’s first orbit, and a celebratory banquet hosted by Lyndon Johnson that featured a fan dancer at the end. Howard’s series touches on their stories, but puts the emphasis on the voyage to the moon.

There’s not much point in writing a review (even a retro review) of a mini-series that is ten years old, but the experience has jogged a lot of random thoughts and memories. Here are a few of them:

1. White dudes in ties

According to the mini-series, about 98% of the Earth’s population (or at least NASA’s population) during the space race were white dudes in ties. The other two percent were tanned white dudes in ties. It’s like the whole government agency was from my hometown.

2. “That Guy” factor

On a similar note, “From the Earth to the Moon” seems to be a prime entry for the “Random Recognizable White Supporting Actor Dude” Hall of Fame. (Bill Simmons of ESPN calls these people “That Guys”, but in this case I don’t think that suitably describes the category.) There were more RRWSAD’s in this movie than in “Ghandi”. For example: Dad in “Malcolm in the Middle” dude, Bad Guy in “Ghost” dude, Goodwin the “Other” from “Lost” dude, Kevin Pollack dude, Ron Howard’s Little Brother dude, The Teacher from “Summer School” dude…and the list goes on.

3. “Right Stuff” factor

One of the biggest challenges in watching the mini-series was keeping track of the cast changes from “The Right Stuff”. I’m used to Scott Glenn being Alan Shepherd and Ed Harris being John Glenn (which was confusing enough the first time), but now everyone is different. I know that Gordo Cooper looks familiar, but he’s not Dennis Quaid anymore. And Chuck Yeager isn’t in the new mini-series, so he can still be Sam Shepherd.

4. Faked Moon landing

During my second year at USU one of my roommates showed me this one-hour special on how they “faked” the moon landing. He wasn’t a conspiracy theorist—though he was Canadian—but it was an interesting little piece of X-Files-esque work that basically said that the moon landing was fake because if you look at the footage the US flag is waving in the wind, and there isn’t any atmosphere on the moon, so there couldn’t be any wind blowing it, therefore the whole thing is a fraud and over ten years NASA spent 50 trillion dollars and man hours ordering pizza and shooting off rockets into Outer Mongolia before hustling Neil Armstrong onto a sound stage in 1969.

5. Rekindled passion for space

Even though my current career path has taken me down a more media-humanities-based road, watching “From the Earth to the Moon” reminded me of how cool the whole space exploration thing is, and how much I loved it as a kid. I’m sure a lot of it had to do with “Star Wars”, but that interest and awe was fostered by childhood trips to the Hansen Planetarium, where I would stare at posters of Jupiter and all of its moons and come to the conclusion that I would inevitably wind up a starship captain when I grew up.

The most powerful of these images was a shot I came across in one of my science books of a simple red rock landscape that looked like it could have been taken down in southern Utah (and probably was, by a crew of pizza-eating white dudes in ties, right?). There was nothing extraordinary about the image itself—it was hardly an Ansel Adams—other than the fact that it was taken on the surface of Mars.

Let me repeat for emphasis: the photo was taken on THE SURFACE OF FRIGGIN' MARS.

This isn’t an image taken from a huge telescope that lets you peek at the Red Spot of Jupiter, which is a huge storm system so many times larger than the Earth. It isn’t even the surface of the moon. This is Ray Bradbury’s dream. This is what you would see if you actually LANDED on Mars, opened the door, and stepped outside for a stretch. I don’t know if I’m making myself totally clear, but that just amazes me. When I saw the photos from the Viking lander, I just thought they were the coolest thing ever.

Over time my visits to the Planetarium were less nerd-based and more “hey, I need to do something on a date Friday”-based, and eventually they closed the Hansen Planetarium and opened up the elaborate-but-lacking-in-historic-personality Clark Planetarium over at the Gateway. So I still have a place to go on dates, and I can still satisfy the inner geek, so I’ve got that going for me. I am a little disappointed that our 21st century reality hasn’t quite measured up to the splendor of the space-traveling flying car future of my youth, but our society has advanced in other important ways. You know, like being able to take little pictures with my cell phone and iPods and microwave pizza and stuff.

Maybe NASA can figure out how to make Bob Kellersburger’s Beef Jerky…

Starting Five: Best Bad Songs

There are two kinds of bad songs. The first kind are the bad songs you hate, songs that make you instinctively reach for the dial or hit “skip” whenever their first horrible pangs brush your eardrums. Coming off the Christmas season, the first of these songs that springs to mind is Paul McCartney’s “Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time”, though you could also include pretty much any country song that’s come out since 1980 as well. Very simply, these are bad songs you don’t enjoy listening to.

The second category is reserved for bad songs you do like to listen to, even if it’s only in a sick, “you’ve gotta hear this” kind of way. These are songs that were originally meant to be taken seriously, until their meanings dawn on you and you just can’t listen to them with a straight face anymore. The songs might be catchy, but the lyrics are just too darn stupid to ignore. But you’ve got to love them anyway.

Here are the best of the second category:

Point Guard: Neil Diamond, “I Am I Said”

I credit Dave Barry for bringing this one to light. There’s really no other musician that inspires the same degree of dual love and disdain as Mr. Diamond. His style is his style, and you either love it for what it is or you despise it for the exact same reason. As for me and my house, I love it.

Neil’s style gives many of his hits a singular quirkiness, but for me “I Am, I Said” gets the crown for this list. It’s another one of those inspiring “me against the world” type of ballads, with a sweeping chorus and building crescendos. But…there’s that one lyric in the middle of it all that’s so hard to get past…

I am, I said…to no one there,
But no one heard at all,
Not even the chair.

Huh? The chair? What exactly was the chair supposed to hear? And how do you know it didn’t hear you—has it responded differently when it has heard your anguished midnight cries in the past? Does it wiggle around on a short leg? Does it just sit there? Is this some kind of bizarre reference to the tree falling in the woods concept? Really, Neil, love the song…but what the?




Shooting Guard: Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, “Young Girl”

Listen to an oldies station for about a half hour and you’re bound to hear this one. It’s another catchy tune, done with typical overly dramatic bravado by Mr. Puckett (see also “Lady Willpower” and “Woman, Woman”). But only “Young Girl” has that special kind of quality, the one that makes you pause and think, “wait a minute, is he talking about underage girls?”

With all the charms of a woman,
You’ve kept the secret of your youth,
You led me to believe you’re old enough,
To give me love,
And now it hurts to know the truth…

Somehow the Police managed to get away with this idea in “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”. I don’t know how Gary Puckett did.




Small Forward: The Beatles, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road”

Alright, most of these songs make the list because they craved legitimacy. Obviously this one didn’t. I place it here for a different reason: this song was the “I’m Keith Hernandez” moment for the Beatles. They’d been world famous for a good five years, most everything they’d touched was turning to gold, and they were just about to release a double-album of half-finished songs that would still go on to be a critically-renowned masterpiece decades later. So why not tack on a song so totally explicitly ridiculous that it flies in the face of any poor loser who has ever dreamed of putting his heartfelt poetry to wax?

The first time I heard this I was sitting in my aunt and uncle’s backyard in Logan, sitting on a lawn chair with a tape of the White Album in my Walkman. My mom’s Beatle collection wrapped up around Revolver, but my aunt and uncle were able to help me continue my fifth-grade infatuation with all things Fab Four. After a dozen or so memorable tracks like “Back in the USSR”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and the seminal “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, I hear a slow tap on the drums, then Paul McCartney wailing…

Why don’t we do it in the road?

He just kept singing that same line, over and over. He even threw in a falsetto for fun. The only other line in the song?

No one will be watching us...

We sure won’t, Paul…but we’ll be listening to it. Thanks a bunch.




Power Forward: Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With”

The Beatles’ song was bad because it was so over-the-top obvious it actually became a kind of satirical statement. The Stephen Stills song is bad because you get the feeling he’s trying to get away with something. Fresh out of the height of the hippie Free Love thing, before everyone figured out what STD’s were, Stills stepped aside from his Crosby, Stills and Nash work to do a solo album, which featured a catchy tune that seemed to embody the feeling of brotherhood and community one should have towards his fellow man…and woman.

Strangely, fidelity didn’t seem to be one of those hippie virtues…

And there’s a rose in a fisted glove,
And the eagle flies with the dove,
And if you can’t be with the one you love,
Love the one you’re with...

Uhhh….




Center: The Righteous Brothers, “Rock and Roll Heaven”

If you listen to enough 60’s songs, every once in a while you come across a song about other songs, or other artists. “Oldies but Goodies” is one, Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul Music” is another. It’s a kind of weird idea if you think about it…kind of like if Picasso just patched together a painting with chunks from some of his other favorite artists. Shouldn’t Picasso just do his own thing?


Well, The Righteous Brothers had their own thing, and it was a really good thing. Then one day someone got the idea of doing a tribute song to all of those dead rock stars that seemed to keep dropping like flies. Hey, that’s kind of a sweet idea, right?

It might have been, if it weren’t for the chorus…

If you believe in forever,
Then life is just a one-night stand…
If there’s a Rock and Roll Heaven,
Well you know they have a Hell of a band...

That lyric, my friends, is the pivot around which all bad lyrics must feed. It is the Shaquille O’Neal of bad lyrics. Wow.




Sixth Man: The Guess Who, “American Woman”

Originally I was going to stick Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” here, partially because of the bad lyric, and partially because I wanted to have at least one song in here that didn’t come out in the 60’s or 70’s. Then I remembered a fascinating experience I had at the Delta Center a few years ago (when it was still called The Delta Center), and I realized that pretty much any 80’s butt rock lyric could qualify for the list, so anything by Def Leppard, Poison, Ratt, Warrant or Whitesnake should be considered positions 7-12 (plus two more on the injured list and half a dozen for the developmental league) on the bench. There, now I feel a lot better about that.

Now for the story: back in October of 2001, I found myself celebrating my 25th birthday by watching Joe Cocker and The Guess Who playing back-to-back sets at the Delta Center. My date for the evening was a young woman named Mandy, who I learned later that night had been engaged to my friend Jeremy up until 48 hours earlier. But that’s another story.

As you might recall (it tends to pop up in the news now and then), about a month earlier, several commercial airliners had been hijacked and flown into a variety of symbolic targets in a massive terrorist attack against our fair nation. The ensuing wave of patriotism was very high, and still had several weeks to go before disintegrating back into the partisan catfighting that was the status quo.

Into this hotbed of country love come The Guess Who and their heralded epic, “American Woman”, truly one of the giants of the Classic Rock genre. The Guess Who, some might remember, were Canadian, and “American Woman” is kind of a protest song about Vietnam. Kind of. Well, you tell me…

American Woman…get away from me,
American Woman…mama, let me be,
I don’t need your war machines,
I don’t need your ghetto scenes,
Colored lights can hypnotize,
Sparkle someone else’s eyes…

And so on.

Granted, I totally dig the song. It’s got a killer riff and everything. I usually just think of the “American Woman” as metaphoric for bad people in general as opposed to one country or one gender. (My buddy Seth’s dad played a version of the song called “Viewmont Woman” during an early 1970’s high school Battle of the Bands). Still, I found it odd that in the midst of such heartfelt nationalism, about 10,000 adoring fans—mostly American, and many women—danced and sang along with the Guess Who with such uninhibited passion. Or maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Alcohol can be a powerful influence, I guess…

The Third Annual Official Post-Christmas Letter (Unrated Director’s Cut)

Dear friends, relatives, mortal enemies, and random net surfers who landed on this blog in between a Ricky Martin fan page and a site dedicated to mid-eighteenth century Chinese poetry—

As you can see quite clearly from the title, this is the third of the official post-Christmas letters, so named because I long ago gave up the idea of getting Christmas cards out on time. This time around, due partially to a crazy work schedule, partially to laziness, and mostly due to the fact that it’s been so hard to come up with legit blog ideas lately, I have opted to publish this year’s letter online rather than spend a lot of time with Adobe inDesign assembling a pretty .pdf to send around.

I deeply apologize.

I also apologize for the fact that 2007 in the life of Josh was a complete embodiment of that annoying cliché that “things are always darkest before the light shines through”. Or maybe it was, “the night is always darkest before the dawn.” Or, “daylight come and me wan’ go home”. I don’t know. At the end of last January my roommates and I were given two weeks to sign a second 12-month lease at our townhouse or get lost, even though we’d already been promised a month-to-month contract once the initial lease was complete. In April my promotion to full-time English instructor at the Utah State University Salt Lake Center was approved, then redacted, in spite of the best efforts of the local administration. In the same fell swoop, the University also cancelled the firefighter program I had been teaching in for the past two years, so there really wasn’t any reason to stick around---other than health benefits, of course. A few weeks after leaving USU I dislocated and lacerated my right index finger playing church volleyball. Plus I got jacked on my taxes, my grandpa got diagnosed with dementia, and in February we had to put my dog Otto to sleep. I was not a fan of 2007.

Fortunately my roommate John and I managed to land in a great house in Bountiful in March, along with my old friend and editor Mark from my Statesman days in Logan. The house has since been the site of a Toga Party, a Lounge Party, a Bad T-shirt Party, a Bad Sweater Party, and one courtesy visit from the Bountiful Police Department. My decision to walk away from Utah State ultimately became a risk that paid off handsomely. A timely conversation with my old Viewmont High drama teacher Steve Anderson landed me a pro-bono gig as a sketch producer for a KJZZ variety show called “B All Over” over the summer, which in turn became a full-time paid gig as a producer for the station’s upcoming morning news program, “KJZZ Café”. I wound up spending every Monday for about five months hanging out with my grandpa, an opportunity I might not have had were it not for his condition. And in the midst of all that I managed to drive down to San Diego and meet Ray Bradbury.

Oh, yes…it also turns out the church has fantastic insurance policies for their sponsored activities.

As 2007 drew to a close last month, I was most startled to see how similar the year had been to the circumstances of 2002, when I went from full-time cartographic aid at the Natural Resources Conservation Service in downtown Salt Lake to graduate English instructor up in Logan by the end of the year. I started both years treading water in functional jobs that I knew I wasn’t meant to stay at, and by year’s end managed to change addresses, wards, occupations, and careers. Sometimes history repeats itself in totally different ways.

Some other historic notes for 2007? Read my first Harry Potter book. Watched all six seasons of “The Wonder Years”. Debuted a short film at the Epic Summer Film Festival. Got to see Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, and the B-52’s in concert (though not all together—what a strange Lollapalooza that would be). I even got to play in a band myself (“The Last Starfighters”) at a ward talent show. A good friend landed me a guest photographer spot at a Jazz game, too.

Even the simple stuff was good. Maddox hamburgers. Fresh salsa in late summer. iTunes. Even having a drive-in movie theater to drop by every once in a while means something to a retro stud like myself.

Most of all I’m happy to say that my family has managed to stick through a year that has seen more than it’s share of speed bumps. The Lord has looked over us in adversity just as much as He’s blessed us with moments of prosperity, and in the end the former will probably be the more valuable of the two. I hope He’s done the same for you.

See you all again in twelve (or hopefully sooner)—

Josh

PS: If any of you owe me money, I have not forgotten.

The Fresh Prince of Manhattan

“I Am Legend”
2 ½ stars out of Four

My appreciation for Will Smith has come a long way from back when I first ordered “…And in This Corner” from the BMG Music Service (and sold it off a few years later). When you see him in “Pursuit of Happyness”, it’s hard to even remember he used to call himself “The Fresh Prince”.

Even though “I Am Legend” gives the impression that it’s supposed to be more of a sci-fi/horror movie instead of a character piece, it’s Smith’s acting that surprised me and made me ultimately enjoy the film. It was definitely as scary and intense as people described, the special effects used to make New York look overgrown and deserted were great, and the opening shot of Smith cruising in a Mustang at high speed through Manhattan was totally appropriate (Charleton Heston does the same thing in “The Omega Man”, which is the 70’s version of the same story by Richard Matheson).

But I think Smith really makes this movie. He really seems to be living the situation—he’s the last man alive in New York City after a super-virus wipes out 90% of the population—kind of like Tom Hanks in “Castaway”, except that Smith gets to talk to a real dog instead of a volleyball.

(Actually, Smith does talk to mannequins he has distributed around town in random locations, which at first you think is just a joke, then you realize he is really getting close to la-la-land.)

Smith may be the only man left in New York, but he’s not the only resident. 9% of the population got turned into zombies by the virus (think “28 Days Later”), and the zombies run the town when the sun goes down. (The zombies can’t be exposed to sunlight, which kind of makes them vampire-zombies…or Michael Jackson.)

Here lies my only gripe. I loved the story, the acting, the cinematography, and especially the sparse Bob Marley soundtrack (perfectly timed with my recent Reggae phase). But the CGI zombies look bad. They scare you when you first see them, but when you get a better look at the animation—and the now-cliched “extending lower jaw effect”—the impact loses its steam, and you wish that at least for the close-ups, the director would have used real people in makeup. (Again, think “28 Days Later”).

If it wasn’t for that, I would have absolutely loved this movie. As it is, it stands as another potentially awesome flick that got undermined by everyone’s continued infatuation with all things computer-generated.

Too bad.

“I Am Legend” is rated PG-13 for some swears, Will Smith shooting his guns a lot, the CGI zombies, and this bit where a lion wanders through town and eats a deer.

Resolutions for 2008

As I started to think about what resolutions I should make for the New Year, I realized that my life would actually be a lot easier if everyone else got some stuff straightened out instead. So here are my New Year’s resolutions for other people.

Hollywood Movie/TV Studio rep dudes (people holding up writer’s strike): give the Writer’s Guild a fair share of streaming Internet profits so shows like “Lost” can go back into production and we don’t have to get stuck with a year’s worth of crap reality shows.

David Letterman (host, "Late Show with David Letterman"): Don't nominate any future successors until you've given some young comedians suitable time to grow and develop their careers sufficiently. I'm thinking I'll be ready in about eighteen months.

People who talk in church (speakers): Stop telling me to look up scriptures in Sacrament Meeting; you're giving a talk, not a Sunday School lesson.

My Parents (parents): Raise my allowance from ten to twelve dollars a week.

Raja Bell (Guard, Phoenix Suns): Force trade back to Jazz, where he will give us needed perimeter defense.

Dean Paynter (my boss, KJZZ Television): Change show format from two hours live news to ten minutes live news, one hour sing-a-long, fifty minutes cool YouTube videos.

Jon Voight (actor, “Deliverance”, “Seinfeld”, “September Dawn”): Eat my shorts.

Steven Spielberg/George Lucas (director/executive producer, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”): Resolve to make sure new Indiana Jones movie doesn’t suck.

Scott (my landlord): Embrace certain socialistic platitudes, subscribe to the notion of ownership by the people, decide that I am the people, and make me an entrenched landowner at a fabulously discounted rate.

Mr. Gold (Gold’s Gym regional manager dude): Put complimentary towel racks back in the locker rooms where they were before Gold’s bought out XCel Spa & Fitness approximately ten minutes after I posted my gym article.

Audrey Tautou (actress, “Amelie”/”DaVinci Code”): Move to USA, join LDS church, take romantic interest in rookie TV producers in greater Salt Lake market named Josh who have had sideburns for better part of fifteen years.

Bob Kellersburger (retired meat guy, genius behind Bob’s Famous X-Spice Beef Jerky): End this retirement façade and get back to making that jerky my parents sent me every month of my mission in Chicago.

Tom Brady (quarterback, New England Patriots): Wipe that smirk off your face, stop hiding behind the Tuck Rule, retire from the NFL, admit that it’s better to be a standup guy than to live a lie.


Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones (surviving dudes from Led Zeppelin): resolve to tour again only if you make a stop in Salt Lake City and provide six front row tickets to a special guy in Utah that shaves his head, digs the Zep and doesn’t want to have to wait in line or manage a dozen different browsers to compete for the chance to shell out $500 for a ticket to a concert he’s going to have to fly across the country to attend.

Wal-Mart Clerks (evil empire employees): When you bag my groceries, turn the rotating bag dispenser counter-clockwise so I can pull the bags off quicker instead of having to wait for them, or worry that I've left any of my groceries behind because you didn't rotate the thing all the way around when you finished my order.

Phil Knight (CEO, Nike shoes and other stuff): Re-issue enough pairs of Air Jordan IV's and VI's that I don't have to camp out in front of Foot Locker and spend $300 a pair to get them, then feel like an idiot when I actually wear them on a basketball court.

Utah Drivers (people who park in the fast lane): Learn to look in your rear-view mirrors, use your turn signal, and stay in between the white dashed lines; or, if that proves too much of a challenge, just get your Cafe Rio delivered.

Ross Anderson (former Mayor, Salt Lake City): Eat Jon Voight's shorts.

Larry Miller (Owner, Utah Jazz, my boss boss): Have your car people acquire a BMW dealer that will allow all LHM employees to pick up a black ’08 BMW M5 for about five grand.

Wounded Mosquito Readers (you): Resolve to make more frequent comments on WM blog posts so Josh has more ideas for future posts and doesn’t have to dream up new ideas while he’s trying to get used to a job that currently gets him to the office at 3AM every morning.

Evangeline Lilly (actress, “Lost”): If things with Tautou don’t work out, ditch Hobbit, move back to the mainland, join LDS church, etc., etc., etc.

Some treasure should stay buried…

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
1 ½ stars out of Four

Ever wonder why all the “Rocky” sequels were so lousy compared to the original? Besides the “Rocky single-handedly defeats communism” plots?

Here’s why: the first “Rocky” was an underdog story. And in order to try to recapture the magic of the original, each sequel had to find a new way to put Rocky back in the underdog position, even if he was living in a multi-million dollar mansion, driving a Ferrari, and enjoying the side effects of anabolic steroids. Of course, these efforts became more and more absurd, until suddenly you had Rocky in a street fight with a kid twenty years his junior in “Rocky V”.

Here’s my point: “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” tries to do the same thing. In the first one, you had Nicholas Cage, a career fortune hunter trying to overcome a negative family stigma and win over the pretty blond while searching for a long-lost treasure that was hidden away deep in the earth. At the end of the movie, he found the astronomically huge fortune, and rode off into the sunset with the blond to live in the fairytale mansion. (His sidekick got the Ferrari).

Now in “National Treasure II: Pretty Much the Same Exact Movie”, the folks at Disney are trying to make Rocky the underdog again. Nicholas Cage is back trying to restore the family name (an ancestor has been accused of being part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln), win the blond (she kicked him out of the fairy tale house for no apparent reason), and find the buried treasure (the “Book of Secrets” leads to the legendary City of Gold, which for some reason is deep underground instead of, say, in Guatemala).

It’s the exact same thing.

Of course most people won’t notice, because this movie is supposed to be a traditional brainless action popcorn movie. I’ll admit I enjoyed the first (I though of it as “DaVinci Code” for people who didn’t read), mostly because Diane Kruger (the blond) is pretty good looking, and to a degree I enjoyed the second…until I realized it was the exact same movie (subbing Ed Harris for Sean Bean) and started feeling depressed that Nicholas Cage doesn’t do stuff like “Moonstruck” and “Raising Arizona” anymore.

Bottom line? It’s a dollar movie. (Actually a dollar-fifty. I think the price at Sugarhouse went up.)

“National Treasure: Book of Secrets” is rated PG (really!) for over-the-top action, annoying one-liners from the sidekick, the distracting blond, and the funny feeling that you’ve seen the guy that plays the President before (he plays JFK in “Thirteen Days”).