The Birthday List, Item #3: Play the Drums at Buddy Guy's*

Some of the best advice I have ever been given was to seek out frightening situations and take risks in life. So when I saw that a landmark Chicago blues club would be hosting an open jam night while I was in town last month, I knew I had to participate.

I already figured that at some point in the week I would drop by Buddy Guy's Legends to hear some great music take some great pictures. Founded by one of Chicago's most beloved bluesmen, the club was only a couple of blocks from where I was staying at the south end of the Loop, and I knew from previous experience that the place would deliver. But now the question became: could I?

According to the club's website, open jam night would feature volunteer musicians who were welcome to drop by and sign up to play for free. You just had to bring your own instrument and sign your life away at the door in exchange for a waived cover charge and a chance at public humiliation. At least that's what the bouncer told me when I signed my name on the list and took a seat near the left side of the stage.

The first half of the night was filled by The Jimmy Burns Band, who played a regular set with Eric "Guitar" Davis on lead axe. I took a bunch of pictures and enjoyed some great blues music, all the while wondering if I would take the stage myself by the end of the night. My nerves jumped a level when at the tail end of the opening set, Buddy Guy himself showed up to sing a few tunes. Somehow I kept my composure, thinking, "well, if I'm going to humiliate myself, I may as well humiliate myself in front of the best."

After Buddy's cameo, the night shifted to open jam mode. Only the jam wasn't quite as open as I'd expected. Instead of a bunch of random musicians improvising, the MC kept calling up people who seemed very familiar with each other, and very rehearsed. In fact, the songs they played sounded more polished than the songs my band had been playing after months of practice. I started to get the sense that I was out of my league.

But hey, I couldn't back out now, right?

As the evening drew on, and more seasoned musicians took their turns wowing the increasingly intoxicated audience, I began to wonder if anyone would even call my unknown name off the sign-up list, or whether I should even hang around to find out. Even Buddy had already left for the night. Maybe signing up and hanging around for four hours would be enough of a frightening experience by itself?

Wrong. I had to go the distance.

So I did what any rational, level-headed underqualified drummer would do: I approached the MC and talked my way onto the stage. At the moment of truth, I found myself sitting at a foreign drum kit, surrounded by unfamiliar musicians, staring into the bright lights and smoky haze of one of Chicago's most celebrated blues clubs. On a far wall, a row of guitars autographed by the likes of Jimmy Reed and Eric Clapton hung silently. I clutched the souvenir DW sticks I had bought earlier in the day at the local House of Blues and tried to smile, praying I would pick up on the beat quick enough to avoid total humiliation.

I got in unscathed for the first number--a solid 4/4 beat--and even managed to recover when one of the souvenir sticks slipped out of my hands and rolled around on top of the kit before I grabbed it again. When the song ended, I looked around nervously, but no one was glaring at me or waving me off stage, so I stuck around.

In retrospect, that probably would have been a good time to sign off.

Song #2 was more of a 2/4 beat, at least that's what I thought. From the looks I started to get from the other guys, I might have been wrong on that one. Still, no one ran me off at the end of the song, and the crowd was still cheering and dancing, so I figured I was OK.

The wheels came off on song #3. For the life of me, I had no idea what beat to lay down at the beginning of the song, so there was a good 10-second stretch at the beginning where I tried to tap my way in and generally made a mess of things. Finally the bass player looked at me and started mouthing the count, which I would have appreciated more if not for the condescending manner of his delivery, and I finally got off the ground. At the end of the song, the MC walked up and offered an awkward handshake. It was time to step down.

As I walked offstage, I passed through a gathering of musicians, none of whom so much as made eye contact with me. No one said anything, but they didn't need to. I lingered for a moment, awkwardly wanting some moment of closure with someone around me, even if it was only to apologize for not being up to the standard of the rest of the guys. But no one came up, and the band was already into its next song, so I just turned and walked out the door.

Two hours later, I was still sitting up wide awake in my room, trying to make sense of what I had just done. I took the risk, I faced the fear, so why did I feel so terrible? I wondered if I should ever pick up the drumsticks again, let alone show my face in Buddy Guy's club in the next two decades. I wondered what would have happened if Buddy was still there when I played...would he have pulled me off the stage by my ear, enraged that I had defiled the quality of his precious club? Or would he have offered the closure I sought as I stood offstage afterward, putting his arm around me like a knowing grandparent and telling me to keep at it?

Over the next few days, the shock wore off and I started to get a little perspective on what I had done. Clearly I wasn't ready for the big time, but there was no doubt in my mind that I had done the "right" thing by getting up on stage. Maybe I didn't bring the house down, but I definitely made a memory for the ages.

Besides, as time goes by, the stories of the failures are a lot more fun to tell than the stories of the triumphs. And eventually they all blend together anyway.

---

*This is a great example of the "living document" nature of The List. When I was brainstorming ideas for the original list, I knew I would be spending some time in Chicago this summer, so I thought "photograph a Chicago blues band" might be a logical option. But since technically I already had taken some pictures of a Chicago blues band (back in 2008), I wound up placing this option on my back-up list. However, about 36 hours after arriving in Chicago last month, it was time to make a change.

The Birthday List, Item #1: Visit Bruce Lee's Grave

I don't know what it is about celebrity death, or celebrity grave sites, that is so fascinating. Chuck Klosterman wrote a book about a mega-road trip he took to visit the death sites of various rock and roll heroes, and the title of Rolling Stone author Neil Strauss's book "Everybody Loves You When You're Dead" speaks for itself. Maybe it's because we typically see celebrities as otherworldly creatures, images on a TV screen or voices on the radio, and standing next to their gravestones reminds us that they were actual human beings. Maybe we're just weird.

When I was an LDS missionary in Chicago, I was excited to learn that Al Capone's grave was in a cemetery across the street from the chapel where we held our mission leadership meetings. There was probably no more iconic Chicago "celebrity" than Capone, so after every meeting, a few of us would head over to see the grave and take pictures. This led to the curious image of a half-dozen guys in dark suits standing somberly over the grave of a deceased mafioso.

Last summer, on my first visit to Seattle, I made a point to visit the Jimi Hendrix memorial. Whereas Capone's marker was little more than a flat nondescript chunk of cement, the Hendrix Memorial was the centerpiece of the entire cemetery. I guess you can take a lot of messages from that.

I had already arranged a return visit to Seattle before I compiled my Birthday List, so I thought I should try to come up with an item or two that I could take care of while I was in town. Having already visited the Hendrix memorial, it seemed logical that I should visit the grave site of another Seattle music icon, Kurt Cobain. Trouble is, Cobain doesn't have one. He was cremated. You can go see the house where he committed suicide back in the 90's, but that seemed a little too macabre to justify. Besides, I found a better option.

Bruce Lee has been a fascinating character to me ever since I saw his bio pic "Dragon" when I was a teenager. While I've never been a huge fan of martial arts films, I was very interested in how Lee was able to discipline himself into such a finely-tuned butt-whooping machine. Plus, unlike the images created by a lot of Hollywood behind-the-scenes tell-all's, he seemed like a genuinely good guy. From time to time I'll wonder what would happen if I just set aside all my favorite junk foods for six months and did some hard-core training. I certainly wouldn't be Lee, but his example does suggest a little of what the human body is truly capable of. It's a topic that becomes more and more relevant after you cross the line into your 30's.

Anyway, Lee is buried in north Seattle (his wife's hometown), and on a Sunday afternoon in early July I zipped up there with The Cheetahman (another example of what the human body is capable of, if you're referring to Guess boots and cheetah-print speedos) to check it out. He's actually buried next to his son, Brandon, who died in a film set accident two months before "Dragon" was released (Bruce died at 32, his son at 28).

The grave site was a little crowded that day, so I didn't linger for a lot of quiet contemplation. In a way, I almost felt under-qualified to be there, since I wasn't as familiar with his film resume the way I was familiar with, say, Jimi Hendrix's recording career. On the few occasions I have dropped by to see the grave of someone famous, I've noticed there's always a moment where you quickly transition from a kind of laid-back "hey, I'm going to go see so-and-so's grave!" to a somber realization that you are visiting the final resting place of a real human being. Two-dimensional celebrity becomes three-dimensional reality, and at that point you lose interest in the nature of the person's death and think more about what they were in life. So I just took a couple of pictures and tried to maintain some semblance of an air of respect. Maybe it's true that everybody loves you when you're dead, but unlike Capone, Bruce Lee seems like someone who deserved to be loved when he was still around.

Bruce and Me

OK, so it's official: I look like Bruce Willis.  I've always wanted to think I looked like Bruce Willis (at least since I started shaving my head), but I never felt justified in making the claim on my own.  I needed external confirmation.  You can't pick your own nickname, and you can't pick your own celebrity doppelganger.  These are the very pillars of civilized society.

So who offered me this external confirmation of which I speak?  1990's country star Collin Raye, that's who.  Last week after one of his recent concerts at the Desert Star Playhouse in Murray, I was hanging out with Mr. Raye backstage* discussing the extended piano/guitar solo at the end of the early 1970's Derek and the Dominos hit "Layla" when he interjected the following:

"Has anyone ever told you you look just like Bruce Willis?"

Doppelganger confirmed.

That was Wednesday night. On Saturday, I was out in North Salt Lake at a clubhouse party when my buddy Tyler and I chose to approach a girl who looked a lot like Meg Ryan. That resemblance, in fact, was our method of breaking the ice with her.  Then Tyler continued the game:

"So what famous person does my friend here look like?" (indicating me)

"Bruce Willis," she said, without skipping a beat.

So there you go.  Two unrelated confirmations that I look like one of the baddest action heroes to ever grace the silver screen (or the small screen, I might add; I've been a big fan of Bruce ever since his "Moonlighting" days). Truth be told, my sister has maintained my resemblance to Mr. Willis for several years now, but I always dismissed it because she is legally and genetically obligated to make me feel good about myself.

But Collin Raye and Meg Ryan aren't.

Yippie Ki-Yay.

---

*A future post will clarify the circumstances of this exchange, but for now I will just sit back and let it fester in your totally-blown minds.

Defending Ray

Three years ago my sister and I drove a thousand miles to Comic-Con to meet Ray Bradbury.  His work was that important to us...plus, at 87 years old, we worried that if we missed our chance he might not be around to give us another opportunity.

Three years later, Ray is still alive and well, and back in the news.  Just shy of his 90th birthday, Bradbury is none too pleased with modern technology.  Specifically, he hates the Internet, Kindle, Big Government, and thinks we should go back to the Moon (and on to Mars).  People have been giving him grief for his apparent techno-phobia, especially because his phrasing of terms (IE, referring to "Internets" instead of "Internet") makes him come off like a senile old crank.  But I think his critics are missing the point of his message.

Ray Bradbury may not have a perfect technological understanding of the things he is criticizing, but 90 years old or not, I think he still gets it.  In spite of the futuristic, sci-fi element of much of his work (he defines himself as a fantasy writer, for the record), Bradbury's stories have always found their greatest strength in their humanity.  And for all the obvious advantages that modern technology affords us, over-reliance on it can take a heavy toll on that humanity.  Bradbury understands this, and I think this is why he says the things he says.

Digital technology can open wonderful doors of imagination, whether it comes in the form of a camera or a blog or a software program, but it also lets us be lazy if we want to.  You don't have to be a great photographer to take good-looking photographs, and you don't have to be a great web designer to drop some text into a template and hit "publish."

Cell phones and text messaging can be great for staying in contact with friends, but all too often I see groups of friends ignoring each other while they text the friends that aren't there.  Facebook and other social media allow us to reconnect with friends we've lost touch with over the years, but trolling someone's profile page and making occasional comments on their vacation photos doesn't create a depth of relationship.  It just suggests its presence.

I thought it was interesting that this summer's biggest movie is built around a question about our perception of reality.  "Inception" has plenty of cool special effects and an open-ended plot that keeps you guessing, but the film resonates with me because it points the finger at one of the central issues of our time: are we using technology to make genuine connections with the people around us, or are we letting it alienate us even further by using it to create our own personal cocoons of perceived reality?

Ray Bradbury made his career writing about Martians and dinosaurs, but he can also demonstrate the simple profundity of sitting on a deck with a cold drink while the sounds of nature connect you to the meaning of life.  He champions the genuine article over the synthetic, and in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, he's not alone. When he rants that we have "too many Internets," I think that's what he's afraid we're losing.

Radio Doesn't Suck

I am happy to report that my new relationship is going quite well.  It was over two months ago that I terminated my long-term association with KODJ 94.1, and so far the guys on Arrow 103.5 have yet to do any serious analysis of "Dancing with the Stars" or bring on their personal psychic mediums.

In fact, speaking of cosmic coincidences, it turns out I already have a history with my new morning show.  Jon Carter, one of the hosts, also used to do the morning show for Z-93, which was my classic rock show of choice back in high school before the station went country.  Familiar voices can be nice sometimes.

I actually met Carter a few years ago, though I didn't know it at the time.  I was standing in line outside The Depot waiting to get into the Steve Winwood concert with elBreto and The Other Josh when these two guys asked me if I wanted a free t-shirt.  I said yes, because you know, free t-shirt.  Then this other guy in line asked if I wanted to get a picture with the selfless souls who were out clothing the naked.  I said OK.

Later I learned one of the t-shirt guys was Carter.

That's right, kids: radio doesn't suck.

---

PS: About six months later I was wearing the free shirt at a ward Scripture Study activity one Sunday night when Elder David Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles showed up.  He didn't say anything, but I could tell he was relieved that the youth of the Church was staying true to its media roots.

Merry Cleesemas

Early this morning, sometime between the moment I reached up to turn off my alarm and the moment where I actually regained consciousness, I dreamed that John Cleese was hanging out in my parents' living room.

I don't remember much of the incident, outside of a couple of minor--yet intriguing--details.  I remember that he wore a single gold hoop earring, kind of like a pirate.  I also remember that at one point he pulled out a copy of the Bible and sang the 8th Psalm.

Yeah, I know...doesn't make sense to me, either.

What does make sense is that the idea of meeting John Cleese has been knocking around in my subconscious.  In the last three years, I have met two of the most important creative muses of my childhood, and if I were to pick a third, it would probably be Cleese.  (With honorable mention going to Dan Aykroyd.) 

I think most of my regular readers are familiar with Cleese, but for those of you who arrived at my blog from Asia after Googling "Mongolian Death Worm," John Cleese was one of the infamous Monty Python boys, the comedy troupe that brought us "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."  They were the Beatles of British Comedy.  He also played Nearly Headless Nick in the Harry Potter movies.  If Ray Bradbury fostered my love of writing and George Lucas fostered my love of film, Cleese did it for comedy.  Heck, I named this blog after a Python sketch.

Actually, maybe his rendition of the 8th Psalm does make sense.  As I think about it, Cleese is partially responsible for one of the fondest memories from growing up in the Bountiful 19th Ward, the wonderful day Rob Nish played the Python TV theme on the organ in Sacrament Meeting. 

So I guess there is a connection after all.  If I ever do get to meet Cleese, I'll have to tell him the story.  I'm sure he'd appreciate it.

Return of the Saucer Lizards

I don't have a lot of regrets in life. Kind of wished I'd played JV Football my junior year at Viewmont. Probably should have worked that Grateful Dead concert the spring before Jerry Garcia died. And there were definitely a couple of girls I should have kissed when I had the chance.

But overall, I'd say most of my regrets aren't connected to any life-changing decisions. Might have had some more fun along the way, but I probably still would have wound up where I am now.

For example, years ago, around the second or third grade, I remember sitting up one Sunday night with my parents watching the first installment of a brand-new TV mini-series called "V." The 'V' stood for 'Visitors,' and the series was supposed to be about some kind of alien invasion. I watched for the first hour, right up until the moment we met the first alien...and saw that they looked completely human.

I felt shafted. An alien that looks like a human? What a gyp. So I turned tail and played with my Star Wars men for the rest of the night. At least George Lucas knew what an alien was supposed to look like.

The next day I learned I had made a terrible mistake. Every conversation with my friends went something like this:

Me: Hey there, childhood friend.

Friend: HEY JOSH! DID YOU SEE 'V' LAST NIGHT? WASN'T IT AWESOME WHEN DONOVAN SNUCK ONTO THE MOTHERSHIP AND GOT IN THE FIGHT WITH THAT ALIEN AND TOTALLY PULLED HIS FACE OFF SO YOU COULD SEE HIS REAL REPTILE SKIN? THAT WAS THE COOLEST! WHAT AN AWESOME SHOW!

Me: Ugh...

Friend: WE'RE HAVING CHICKEN NUGGETS FOR LUNCH TODAY!

If I'd given the show about fifteen more minutes of my time, I'd have found out that those lame human exteriors were only disguises for a breed of interplanetary space-lizards bent on destroying the human race. I guess I wasn't keen on anticipating plot twists back when I was eight years old.

The next week, I jumped back into the series, then ate up every minute of the follow-up mini-series a year later. They tried to turn it into a weekly TV show after that, though they had to keep recycling the same special effects shots over and over again like in "Battlestar Galactica." It wasn't as cool as "Star Wars," but they had sweet weapons, killer theme music, and the alien leader Diana was the hottest sci-fi chick since Leia donned the iron bikini (even if she was technically a lizard).

Eventually I moved on to GI Joe and Junior Jazz basketball, and "V" faded into the annals of 1980's pop culture. It always held a special place in my heart, even though I got the feeling anyone who wasn't around to see it when it aired wouldn't appreciate it now because of all the low-budget special effects. From time to time I would would hear rumors that they were going to re-boot the series, and my interest was kindled even more when I ran into Donovan himself (Marc "The Beastmaster" Singer) at Comic-Con 2007. He'd also heard the remake rumors, but at the time nothing was confirmed.

Well, now we know the rumors are true. Tuesday night, the lizard-folk are coming back to Earth. I don't know that much about the new series other than the inclusion of Elizabeth "Juliet" Mitchell in the cast, which is cool, and the absence of Singer and Michael Ironside, which is most uncool. But that won't stop me from checking it out.

I don't intend to add any more items to that regret list.

Remembering #12

This weekend John Stockton is going to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. So is Michael Jordan. Seems about right.

When I was a kid, Jordan was the player I wanted to be, but Stockton was the player I was in reality. Jordan was the high-flying aesthetically-stunning highlight machine with the awesome shoes and endless line of posters. Stockton was the quiet white kid who played hard-nosed defense with a chip on his shoulder. At the end of my first year of Jr. Jazz basketball, we had a team party and had to vote each other some kind of honorary award. I was only the second-worst kid on the team, so I managed to avoid the "best effort" award. Instead, I got "best passer," which was appropriate since my only move that year was to dribble from the free throw line down to the right side of the key, then stop and look around for someone to throw the ball to.

I knew "best passer" was a cop-out, but I took it to heart and started to emulate Stockton as I began to grow into a decent ballplayer. I may have been drawing pictures of Jordan in art class and wearing his trademark GRID knee brace during games, but anyone who watched me play saw a kid who excelled at the scrappy stuff: nagging defense, pickpocket steals, quick passes. Like Stockton, I was a little guy who got off fighting the big guys.

One summer at the end of Karl Malone's basketball camp I came face-to-face with my mentor. Stockton came as a special guest speaker, speaking from a small clearing in the middle of 500 of my peers as we stared at him wide-eyed in our white sponsor-covered camp T-shirts. After chatting us up for a bit, he started calling up volunteers for a dribbling drill. My arm shot up like a rocket, but by the time he wandered to my end of the crowd, he already had a dozen eager players ready to go.

"OK," he said as he strolled in my direction, eyes scanning the campers. "Let's get a girl or two in this group."

A bunch of disappointed hands dropped. Mine stayed up. Screw it, I thought, this is John Stockton. I'm not giving up that easy.

Stock looked me square in the eye.

"Are you a girl?" he asked.

I smirked and put my hand down. Had to try, right?

Apparently Stockton connected with my dogged determination, because he tabbed me for the next drill. My only regret was that I had chosen to wear an older pair of bermuda shorts that day in camp, a notably hideous purple pair covered in outer space symbols and astronauts. They were also too small, which seems kind of appropriate given the circumstances.

I never got to see Stock hit the shot against Houston that took the Jazz to the Finals for the first time in the summer of 1997. Ironically, I was riding a Trek 820 through the streets of South Chicago at the time. But I do remember seeing him hit a driving layup over Jordan back in 1990 to cap an 8-point 40 second comeback at the Salt Palace. I do remember seeing him throw the assist that gave him his first season record. I even remember seeing him come off the bench to spell Rickey Green, back when Hot Rod was still calling him "Little John."

As he gets ready for his induction in to the Hall of Fame, he may be slipping in under Jordan's shadow, but the evidence of his influence still shows up every time I step on a court. I may share Jordan's hairline, but all my former high-flying high-scoring aspirations were retired a long time ago. Anything I've got left, any pass, any pick, comes exclusively from the Stockton Playbook.

Bundles of Joy

For the last year my sister has been teaching kindergarten at a private school in Holladay. She's been trying to get me to come in and entertain her students, but I honestly can't think of anything I do that would be of any interest to a five-year-old. So we finally came up with a compromise: Katie has been talking up her 20-year-old pet Cockatiel to her students for several months, so yesterday I brought Satan to class.

(The bird isn't really named Satan...officially, anyway. It's first name was Baby Bundles, which then evolved into just plain Bundles, and now he's referred to as the Bird of the Morning. Satan.)

Now that I have finally met her crew, my suspicions are confirmed: there is nothing I can do that can possibly interest a kindergartner. They were my toughest crowd since I visited the Toastmasters. I told them about being an English teacher, a TV producer, and even about my trip to New Orleans (I think I made a joke about Hurricane Katrina in desperation), all to blank stares. I probably should have just put the bird on top of my shaved head and made goofy faces. At least a few of them agreed that the best breakfast cereal is Boo Berry.

Satan, on the other hand, scored major points with the kids. As my sister told me afterwards, all you have to do to hold a kindergartner's rapt attention is be alive and not be human. Preferably with bright colors. As Katie sat in the corner holding the bird, the kids gradually closed in around her like a pack of plaid jumper and khaki-clad kittens, babbling questions, bobbing up and down, determined to get a close-up look at this foreign presence. When Katie put the bird on her shoulder, the kids started joking that she looked like a pirate. When she finally gave in to let a couple of the kids come pet Satan, her students looked like their heads were going to explode.

The Bird of the Morning, for his part, handled his role pretty well. Considering his circumstances, he remained cool and collected, only getting a little wigged out when called upon to fly ten feet from my sister's hand to the top of his cage, to the utter thrills of his audience. In the wake of this demonstration, I overheard a pint-sized conversation at my feet:

"I wish I could fly."

"Yeah."

"I would fly all over the room..."

I know what you mean, kid. I know what you mean.

Hot Rod drives into the sunset

It seemed appropriate last night that when the Jazz made their last rally against the Lakers, it was led by Ronnie Price and Paul Millsap. They were the ones responsible for the team making it that far in the first place. Price held the ship together early in the season while Deron was out with his ankle injury, and Millsap got All-Star consideration for the way he covered Boozer's spot for over half the season.

Unfortunately, Millsap hit a wall around the All-Star break and was never quite the same. And I still don't know what happened with Ronnie. I keep waiting for some story to break about him conducting human sacrifices in the locker room or trying to recruit Sloan into Amway, something to justify the late-season benching.

Whatever the reasons, it was nice to see the team-not just Deron Williams-play like they cared for a while last night. That was the craziest thing about this season. Normally a series with LA would bring out a whole bevy of anxieties and frustrations, but this time around, the Hollywood crowd didn't even bother me. Ultimately, the demise of the 2008-09 Utah Jazz was self-inflicted.

At least that last run late in the fourth quarter gave Hot Rod Hundley something more interesting to call in his last game. It's hard to believe that guy has been calling games longer than most of my friends and I have been alive. When I started listening to him, "Big Mark" Eaton was still swatting shots, Darrell Griffith was hitting three-pointers from the parking lot, and Ricky Green was still "the fastest of them all." Stockton was still just "Little John." And by that time, Hot Rod had already been at it for almost fifteen years.

I remember eating at his restaurant back in the early 90's and getting a stack of team photos. I remember reading his autobiography and smiling at how crazy it was that a showboat party man like him would wind up calling games coached by Jerry Sloan in the Mormon Heartland. Best of all, I remember hearing over and over how people would turn down the volume when the Jazz were on national TV, and turn up Hot Rod's radio feed because he called the games so much better than the network honks. Fittingly, Boler and Boone turned over the last five minutes of last night's game to Hot Rod before the final buzzer sounded.

I never did get to meet him, though I did see him in the press room the few times I've gone to shoot Jazz games in the last couple of years. If I ever do run into him, I think maybe I'll ask him to tag along and give live play-by-play of one of my dates. He's offered me so much entertainment over the years, the least I can do is offer the same.

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

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.

The White Elephant Collection

Last weekend I got together with a few friends for a now semi-traditional group Christmas Date. After a quick buzz around Temple Square and a generous meal at Macaroni Grill, we retired to my buddy Visser's house to engage in that most hallowed of Christmas traditions, the White Elephant Party.

My score for the evening was a Jumbo TV Remote, large enough that you could basically punch the buttons with a clenched fist while your eyes were closed and still locate the right channel. I was very happy with my take. Other notable gifts included a Virgin Mary night light, a generic train set enclosed in packaging covered with Engrish, and a selection of my old mission photographs. It was a fine night for all.

In the aftermath, I've come to realize that over the years I've built up a respectable collection of worthless conversation pieces. I wouldn't call all of them White Elephant gifts necessarily-some of them would be tremendously difficult to part with-but thanks to the Internet, I can share the items and their stories with you, the reader. Enjoy.




Star Wars Movies...on Beta

Plenty of people have copies of the original "Star Wars" trilogy on VHS, but if you look closely, these are not VHS tapes. Yes, my friend, thanks to my buddy Jared, I am the proud owner of Sony Beta copies of Episodes II and III. For those of you who aren't old enough to remember Beta (I only barely do myself), it was a short-lived video format from the early 80's that quickly went the way of 8-Tracks, Videodiscs, and Lazerdiscs.




Boba Fett Bobblehead

Lest anyone forget my juvenile fascination with the fruits of George Lucas (that doesn't sound very good, does it?), about a year ago I stepped into my shower and discovered that my sister had given me an official Boba Fett Bobblehead Doll. She left it in my shower because she assumed that way I would find it quickly. But sadly, she left it there while I was still trying to adjust to my KJZZ graveyard schedule, and in the confusion I did not discover said gift for about three days.




The South Side Brick

OK, so one fine summer day I'm riding shotgun with my ZL Elder Seamons and my greenie Tubbs as we tool around Chicago's South Side, on our way to visit the James Earl Jones of the Windy City, Mr. Dan Giles (now dead). As we are about to round the corner of Ada and 83rd Street, we pause as a group of children crosses the street in front of us. The last kid in the bunch, a 16-year-old, takes his time as he swaggers in front of our brand new green 1997 Ford Escort.

Not being familiar with proper South Side relations, Seamons honks the horn to encourage the young man to get out of the way. At this point the young man stops, his eyes get wide, and he stands in front of our car, waving and cursing. So Seamons pumps the brake, lurching the car forward a touch, just enough to send a message.

Now our young friend is irate, and begins screaming something to the effect that we can't come down to his neighborhood and etc., etc., etc. So Elder Seamons rolls down his window as I begin to duck down in my seat and yells at the kid to get back in front of the car so he can "do it again".

Fed up with the negotiating process, the kid lowers his head and begins scanning the ground. I distinctly hear him mutter the words, "where's a brick?" Lo and behold, there is a good-sized brick approximately five feet from him, and as he bends down to pick it up, Seamons steps on the gas and we swing around the corner. Elder Tubbs, riding solo in the back seat, turns to look behind us just in time to see an airborne brick rapidly approaching his head, and he ducks just in time to avoid decapitation and getting a face full of rear windshield glass.

2.3 seconds after the rear windshield shatters, Seamons is out of the car and chasing the kid on foot. Tubbs and I pause in the car, surmising that the image of three young white men in shirts and ties chasing a 16-year-old African-American boy through the streets of South Chicago would probably not help the image of the LDS Church in the neighborhood. So eventually we get out of the car and trot behind Seamons at a safe distance, waiting for the formation of the inevitable mob.

Fortunately, 18 months of missionary service has taken a serious toll on Seamons' aerobic conditioning, and the young perpetrator escapes sans further confrontation. So we pick up our trophy and return to our Talman apartment just in time to see a SWAT Team storm a nearby house and throw one of our neighbors in a Paddy Wagon, cut the brick into three collectable chunks, and call it a day.

I really, really miss the South Side.




Chrome Skull Gearshift Knob

For about two years I kept this knob on the gearshift of my 1996 Maxima until the set screw began eroding the shift's threads. In that time it was quite the conversation piece, and managed to quickly sift the parade of girls who rode shotgun with me during that relatively date-heavy period. The attraction to the piece originally came from the skull Harrison Ford hangs from the rearview mirror of his 55' Chevy in "American Graffiti", but the majority of girls didn't quite get the reference, unfortunately. No big surprise.




Gator Head

If you see one of these for sale anywhere outside of the Deep South, you'll probably get charged about $25, but on the streets of New Orleans, these farm-raised babies fill the barrels of French Quarter souvenir shops at a mere $9.99 a piece. This one is enjoying a taste of Indiana Jones.




Marc Singer Autographed Photo

Two summers back my sister and I drove down to San Diego to see Ray Bradbury speak at Comic-Con 2007. After seeing the legendary sci-fi author in the flesh and even getting a chance to meet the man and get his autograph, we trolled the convention to see who else we could see. We ran into George "Mr. Sulu" Takei, David "Darth Vader's Body" Prowse, and LaVar "I'll let you take a picture with me for ten dollars" Burton. But the best moment came when I spotted actor Marc "The Beastmaster" Singer, who also played Donovan in the early 80's Sci-Fi miniseries "V". Totally cool guy.




1980 Cleveland Browns Autographed Football

I inherited this football from my grandpa on my mom's side, and thus would never even consider parting with it at some White Elephant Party, but it's still quite the conversation piece. Die-Hard NFL fans will recognize the 1980 Cleveland Browns as the "Kardiac Kids", notorious for winning or losing their games on last-minute plays throughout the 1980 season. (Non-NFL Die-Hards might still recognize the name Lyle Alzado on the ball.) True to form, the Browns' season ended when Raider cornerback Lester Hayes intercepted a Brian Sipe pass in the end zone during one of the coldest first round playoff games ever recorded. My dad attended the game (we were in town visiting family for Christmas), and his jacket actually cracked from the cold.




Hawaiian Hula Doll

Years ago I convinced a girl to bring me back a hula doll from her trip to Hawaii. We'd been dating off and on for several months, and the relationship was on life support with little-to-no chance of survival. I think my demand was in the hope of keeping enough fleeting contact to preserve a chance of romantic success. Years later, she's married with at least one kid that I know of, and I've got this weird hula doll. So I don't know whether to keep it, give it away, or auction it off on e-Bay.




The Keychain Collection

Here the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you look closely, you should be able to identify a set of Blues Brothers keychains, a Rolling Stones tongue keychain, an R2-D2 keychain, an old watch, a souvenir keychain from when Ringo Starr played at Weber with his All-Starr Band in 1999, a skull keychain (there's that skull theme again), an Alcatraz keychain, some kind of Aztec mask keychain, what looks like a plastic Swiss Army thing, a small flashlight, and the keys and key fob from the '64 Mustang that I drove into a cement wall at 70mph.




Mono Plush Toy

This little plush toy is the cuddly incarnation of the Epstein Barr Virus, commonly known as "Mono", also commonly known as the "Kissing Disease". I bought it as a Christmas gift for a girl I was dating a while back, but the relationship didn't make it to December 25th, and thus I was unable to "give her Mono". Now I'm going to have to wait and give Mono to some other girl.




The Moses Statue

What better way to boost the spirituality of your home than to add a ceramic statue of Moses hurling teeny versions of the Ten Commandments? That's what I was thinking when I laid down twenty bucks for this thing at the Centerville Albertson's three years ago.




Nasty Nick

When I was about ten years old, I strolled into Baseball Cards, Etc. in Five Points Mall in Bountiful and slapped down five bucks to invest in the very first Garbage Pail Kid, Nasty Nick, #1A. It might be worth something now, but looking back I still think I should have spent eight dollars on Adam Bomb, who was card #8 but was much more iconic of the Garbage Pail Kids series. Live and learn.




The Elvis Meets Nixon Snow Globe

My fascination with Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon is well-documented. My basement walls boast two Velvet Elvi and I've got a poster of Richard Nixon bowling in my bedroom. Their Oval Office meeting in the early 70's has to be one of the all time convergences of American political and popular culture, so when I discovered a mini-shrine to the event in the National Archives Gift Shop in DC two years ago, I had to pick up a T-shirt...and the snow globe.




The Black Power Afro Pick

Possibly the greatest thing I brought home with me from my two years in Chicago. While serving on the South Side, one night an investigator named Ronald took me aside and gave me a genuine Black Power Afro Pick. It's got a peace sign carved in the middle, and the top knob is shaped like a Black Power fist, and I can't look at it without remembering all those summer nights riding my trusty Trek 820 mountain bike (dubbed "Thunderlips") along 79th Street past Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam headquarters, past the riot troops getting ready to take on looters after the Bulls won the NBA title, dodging bottles, bricks, and a whole lotta curse words.

Man, I miss the South Side.




Pimpin' Presidents Fridge Magnets

My downstairs fridge has become decorated with a tasteful variety of colorful magnets in recent years, but perhaps none are so noteworthy as my set of "Pimpin' Presidents" my family got me a couple of Christmases ago. And who better to represent the collection than a man who embodied the pop and political cultural convergence that Elvis and Nixon worked so hard to start: President Ronald Reagan. I only wish he'd been drawn with a big Superman logo to go with his bling-bling.





The Lifesize Richard Simmons Cardboard Cutout

My buddy Breto passed this on to me years ago as a kind of Viewmont High heirloom for guys with quirky senses of humor. I was going to pass it on to this kid named Christian, but then he stopped returning my phone calls (which also left me with his bootleg copy of the Beatles' "Let it Be" documentary, incidentally). So now whenever folks swing by the old bachelor pad, they always get a little quality time with Richard Simmons. If they want to spend some quality time with his lower half, they have to go to my parents' basement and go through some of my storage.




The Tabasco Bottle

One cold winter night in 1994, I dropped into the local Dee's Family Restaurant on 5th South in Bountiful with my good friends Brian and Ben. As we slid across the vinyl seats and took up our positions in a remote booth, Brian picked up this bottle of Tabasco Sauce and said something about how a friend of his had chugged one once. Upon hearing this, our waiter told Brian he'd give him five dollars if he'd do it. Five minutes later, Brian was screaming and dumping glassfuls of water down his enflamed esophagus with one hand and desperately clutching five dollar bills with the other. Ben and I rock-paper-scissored it to see who got to keep the bottle, and the rest is history.




The Nutters Trophy

This one is an actual White Elephant gift, my score from semi-traditional Christmas Date #1 in December 2007. The most coveted prize of the evening was an eighteen inch white ceramic Cockatoo-won ultimately by Mr. Dan Moench-but I was most pleased to accept my consolation prize, a small statue of a basketball player in very humiliating shorts.




The Rubber Viking Helmet

The Rubber Viking Helmet has seen plenty of action over the years, first as a key prop in the Salt Lake Institute News Network Skit, "Thedon the Friendly Nephite", then as a inspiring "Zombie-Fest" accessory for my friend Mr. John Visser, and finally as my new roommate Dustin's favorite hat. But technically the helmet still belongs to a kid named JR, who actually bought it from a Crossroads Mall Halloween shop back in October of 1998 around the time the two of us were starting a band with Breto. The band lasted through two practices, JR got engaged to a blond, and ten years later, he has still failed to reclaim his rubber helmet.

If he happens to show up for next year's Christmas Date, I'll have a happy surprise for him.